The Vibrant Connection: Can color influence your curiosity mood?

However, most of us no longer spend our days walking the fields and the forest. Instead we spend most of our time indoors in spaces lit by artificial lighting with fewer colors than sunlight, reflecting off of monochromatic and unchanging walls, floors, and ceilings. But how much does it matter? What effects does a limited and fixed color palette have on our thoughts, emotions, and actions — on our curiosity and our creativity? Can integrating complex, thought-provoking, and colorful visual art into such spaces bring them closer to nature by increasing the number and range of the colors we see?

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Can such exposure to colorful art help activate sensory pathways in our brains and stimulate cognitive processes that will foster inspiration, imagination, curiosity, and creativity? 

Research on how colors affect us

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Recent research at the National Eye Institute using magnetoencephalography suggest that seeing different colors does indeed result in unique patterns of brain activity3. So despite the rainbow being a continuous gradient of hues, our brain naturally divides it into categories (colors). The research also shows that our brain’s activity varies more between light and dark warm hues than for light and dark cool hues. A finding that may explain why in a variety of languages and cultures, humans have more distinct names for warm colors (yellows, reds, oranges, browns) than for cool colors (blues, greens).

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Other research on how specific (primary) colors affect us is also revealing fascinating results. For instance, researchers have discovered that we taste food not only with our mouths, but also with our eyes4,5. When people are asked to sample odorless and flavorless jelly beans, they consistently perceive red ones as sweeter (strawberry), yellow ones as more sour (lemon), green ones as tangier (green apples), and blue jellies as somewhat peculiar (associating the color blue with spoiled food). Even though these jelly beans lack odor and flavor, our minds trick us into perceiving differences based on the colors we see. Another fascinating study has unveiled how our learned color associations affect our expectations and sensations6. Participants were asked to place their hands on red and blue surfaces who’s temperatures were slowly increased, and to signal when the respective surfaces felt warm. The result: the temperature of the red surfaces had to be higher than the blue before it registered as warm. The explanation: we have learned that red means hot and blue means cold, and so we anticipate the red surface to be warmer than the blue. It therefore takes a higher temperature to make us register the warmth in the red surface.
 
More broadly, the field of cognitive neuroscience has also revealed interesting correlations between colors and our mental and physical abilities. For example, studies have shown that people exposed to the color green before brainstorming, generate higher-quality ideas compared to those not exposed to this color, suggesting that green fosters greater creativity and problem-solving. Green has also been found to helps us to better focus our attention and has environmental benefits, reducing mental fatigue and anxiety. Some scholars argue that because we have evolved to associate green with fertility, life, renewal, and growth, perhaps green is intrinsically inviting and motivates us to tackle challenges, broaden our thinking, and reduce mental constraints and stress. Similar to green, hues of blue can encourage open-minded thinking and enhance the perception of abstract concepts. It is also associated with creating a welcoming environment (often used in airline cabins) and to foster a pleasant ambiance. Interestingly, blues and greens have been found to measurably increase cognitive alertness and improve performance on tasks requiring creativity. Shades of yellow can also stimulate thinking, boosting problem-solving and cognitive performance, and tests presented on yellow-colored paper tend to yield higher scores for students. The color red is special and different. It is the first primary color human babies can discern, and the first color (after black and white) to be named in most cultures and languages. This is likely because red signals risk and tells us at a deep biological level to be alert. While red has been shown to boost performance in simple tasks and competitive contests, it seems less able to aid complex thinking or foster a curiosity-promoting environment.

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While the findings outlined above are intriguing and establish that colors do affect our thoughts, emotions, and actions, how we are affected by colors in a given situation, and on any given day, is more complex. A color can mean different things to different parts of our brain, and our brain's response to color can be both innate and instinctual, or socially conditioned and influenced by our upbringing and culture.

The Colorful Psychology of Curiosity

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Curiosity is more than what William James, the father of modern psychology, described as "the impulse to better cognition". While the desire to know is a fundamental aspect of understanding curiosity, it involves more than just intellectual interest. Curiosity extends to our interest in the world (intellectual curiosity), our interest in others (empathic curiosity), and even our curiosity about our inner selves (intrapersonal curiosity). If you'd like to assess your own curiosity score, you can do so at www.globalcuriosityinstitute/assessment.
 

The brain's cognitive processes, including perception and interpretation of visual information, are fundamental to the experience of curiosity. Complex and colorful visual stimuli, such as visual art, can play an important role in feeding and nurturing the different flavors of curiosity. If what we see is novel, interesting, unexpected or unfamiliar, it will grab our awareness, prompt us to pay attention, and lead us subconsciously or consciously down a path of wonder and discovery. We begin to think deeper and wider, and ask questions of the world, ourselves and others. This desire to explore and understand is associated with our brain’s reward system, evoking positive emotions and reinforcing our curiosity.