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Color Red Research Paper

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From the time people are small children, they to respond to the color red. Stop signs and traffic lights are red, signaling possible danger ahead. Red also is the color of passion, hence the abundance of red hues every Valentine’s Day. Red has power.
One study found our reaction to red as a deterrent may have evolutionary roots. Neuroscientist Jerald D. Kralik and his team at Dartmouth College studied male rhesus macaques – a species of monkeys known to be sensitive to certain colors – a few years ago and observed they stayed away from red-clad experimenters most of the time when offered food. (PsycholgicalScience.org). Kralik said this is because monkeys, like people, are very visual and social learners, and the color red helps serve as a …show more content…

(Rochester.edu). Coauthors Andrew Elliot, a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester, and Henk Aarts, a professor of psychology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, stated the boost of energy is likely short-lived, but people flush when they are under attack or angry; the redness serves as a danger cue and enhances physical reactions. In addition, the threat causes “worry, task distraction, and self-preoccupation, all of which have been shown to tax mental resources,” they wrote in a paper published in an issue of the journal Emotion in 2011. (Emotion, 2011, Vol. 11, No. 2, …show more content…

The University of Rochester and the journal paper reported the first had 30 fourth-through-tenth-graders each pinch and hold open a metal clasp. Before doing so, each read his or her participant number written in either red or gray crayon. In the second experiment, 46 undergraduates each squeezed a handgrip with his or her dominant hand when reading the word squeeze on a computer monitor; the word appeared on red, blue or gray backgrounds. In both experiments, participants exerted more force when red was shown. There reactions also were more immediate when they saw red.
But red is not always seen as a sign of something to avoid. In fact, in a 2008 study, Elliot and Daniela Niesta, a post-doctoral researcher, found the color enhances men’s attraction to women. (Rochester.edu). Men are unaware of the role red plays in the attraction, but it likely has biological roots; they pointed to research that showed female baboons and chimpanzees redden when they near ovulation to send a sexual signal to the male

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