I heard these folks talking on the radio. It is all very interesting. Here’s a piece in Science by Greg Miller:
If you’re thinking of hiring a tax accountant, you might want to note the color of his office. According to a new study, the color red can improve performance on detail-oriented tasks–a desirable thing if your goal is an accurate return. However, if you’re hoping to pare down your tax bill with any possible deductions, no matter how far-fetched, you might look for an accountant with a blue office–that color boosts creativity, the researchers report.
Previous research on how color affects cognition has yielded inconsistent findings, says Rui (Juliet) Zhu, a consumer psychologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Some studies find that red enhances cognition, for example, while other studies suggest the opposite. Zhu suspected this might be because the work didn’t pay enough attention to which types of cognition were being affected. Red might enhance performance on some tasks, she reasoned, while impairing performance on others. …
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I read about this, and since I like to waste time changing all the colour settings on my computer from time to time, I experimented with that. I tried changing my windows settings (to blue), also I set Word to blue background with white text. I fooled around with Firefox themes (another time waster I enjoy) and Gmail. It didn’t enhance my creativity at all. Bummer.
Throw this study out–as computer color also contains “light” and has many other distinct effects on the retina that flat “non-lighted” colors don’t.