The Effects of Different Coloured Lighting and Ambience on Mood

Abstract

This study was conducted to determine the combined effects of coloured lighting and ambient sound on mood. 48 psychology undergraduates, comprising of 38 females and ten males, took part in this study. This study is a 2x2 between subjects design. The coloured lightings used in this study are blue and yellow combined with the ambient sound of �city’ and �nature’ whereas mood was measured with the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS). We discovered that coloured lighting had no significant effect on mood as opposed to our hypothesis. The results from this study showed that only the ambient sound affected participants mood.

The effects of different coloured lighting and ambience on mood.

This research aims to discover to what extent the combined effects of coloured lighting and ambient sound affects mood. Not much research has been conducted on the combined effects of colored lighting and ambient sound on mood instead; most researches focused either on lighting or ambient sound. Two types of ambient sound are used in this research. They are “city” ambience and “nature” ambience. By using these two types of sound, we hope to emulate environmental sounds from most cities and natures in a laboratory setting. The types of coloured lighting that are used in this research are yellow and blue. Yellow is often associated with being cheerful and blue is associated with comfort and security (Ballast, 2002; Wexner, 1982, cited in Naz Kaya, 2004), but blue is also shown to have a depressing effect. From a non-scientific point of view, in an interview posted on The New York Times the creator of the television series CSI: New York, Anthony Zuiker claimed that the blue tint used throughout the show caused audiences to feel depressed and as a result, caused the show’s ratings to drop.

A research conducted by Vastfjall(2002) to study noise annoyance by exposing the participants to a recording of a hand-held machine saw, showed that the sound affected participants’ moods and degrees of annoyance. The researcher measured participants’ mood and degrees of annoyance with questionnaires. This research is similar to our research as we are also exposing the participants to sound and measuring their moods with questionnaire. Participants’ responses relating to mood in Vastfjall’s(2002) experiment might also be similar to ours as exposure to the sound might cause participants to display similar responses.

A study to discover the relationship between colour and emotion was conducted by Kaya & Epps (2004). This research took place in a university and involved its students. Participants in their experiment were required to answer a questionnaire while looking at individual computer screens, displaying several different randomly sorted colours. The results from their experiment showed that blue made most of the participants in their experiment felt relaxed, calm, happy, comfortable, and other related positive feelings but for a small portion of the participants, blue made them felt depressed, and made them felt other negative responses. Yellow caused participants to feel lively and energetic and evoked positive emotions such as happiness. This experiment is related to ours as we had predicted as a hypothesis, that blue might elicit negative attributes of mood in participants and yellow might cause participants to elicit positive attributes of mood.

Butryn & Furst (2003) conducted a study on the effects of environmental settings on mood. Participants in their research consisted entirely of female runners, who were required to run four miles in two types of settings, which are a park setting and an urban setting. In this research, Butryn & Furst associated the park setting with nature and greenery and the urban setting with cities. The results from their research showed that there were no differences in results between the two settings. This research is slightly similar to ours except that ours will be taking place in a laboratory while emulating a city setting and nature setting using sounds and coloured lighting.

Stansfeld, Berglund, Clark, Lopez-Barrio, et al (2005) conducted a study on aircraft and road traffic noise on children’s cognition and health. The researchers selected the schools based on their proximity to airports and traffic routes in Spain. They measured the levels of noise the participants faced during their presence in school and conducted tests to determine its effects on health, perception of noise and annoyance using questionnaires. They discovered that aircraft and road traffic noise caused the participants to participants increased levels of annoyance. This research is related to our research as participants in our research will also be exposed to road traffic sounds in the �city’ setting.

Mentioned in Daniel Vastfjall’s research, Peterson & Aniansson (1998), as cited in Vastfjall, 2002 discovered that in relation to mood, the “dimensions of pleasantness and activation decreased significantly” after participants were exposed to 2 hours of traffic noise. We hope to achieve similar results in our experiment by exposing the participants to just approximately ten minutes of city sound that contains elements of traffic noises.

In this research, we aim to discover the combined effects of ambient sound and coloured lighting on mood. We were unable to find precise past research pertaining to our area of research but we managed to obtain closely similar studies involved in each separate variable. We hope that this research will be a first of its kind study in this particular area, and to the best of our knowledge, all other past researches did not focus on the combined effects of ambient sound and coloured lighting on mood, but merely focused on either ambient sound or coloured lighting and its effects on mood.

We hypothesized that; participants under the exposure of yellow lighting and city ambience will score higher in negative attributes which indicates negative mood, participants under the exposure of blue lighting and nature ambience will score higher in positive attributes which indicates positive mood, participants under the exposure of yellow lighting and nature ambience will score evenly in both negative and positive attributes which indicates mixed feelings, participants under the exposure of blue lighting and city ambience will score higher in negative attributes which indicates negative mood.

Method

Participants

48