Sadness makes blue turn
to grey – a more diluted form of colour. Sadness changes the colour of your
world (Time, September 3, 2015).
A 2015 study published
in the Psychological Science journal
shows a direct connection between a person’s ability to perceive colour and
their emotions. Researchers of pyschology at the University of Rochester in
America conducted studies on emotions and visual processes.
Researchers found that
sadness decreases arousal from external stimuli (what we see, hear, feel,
touch, and taste), which in turn limits the amount of light entering the retina
of the eye, which in turn reduces visual acumen (depth of perception). A sad
mood lowers dopamine which impairs neutrotransmitters in the retina. Sadness,
therefore, limits the ability of people to differentiate colours and makes
their world fuzzier and greyer.
In the experiment
researchers had two groups of participants. One group was assigned to watch a
sad film clip from The Lion King. The
other group was shown a comedy presentation. Afterwards, participants in both
groups were asked to look at colours: red, yellow, green, and blue. But all of
the colours were muted to grey. Participants were scored on how accurate their
colour perception was. All participants also completed an emotional evaluation.
In addition, a third group (control group) were asked to watch a neutral
desktop screensaver and perform the colour test and emotional evaluation.
Results showed that
sad people found it more difficult to differentiate between shades of colour,
but only along the blue-yellow colour axis. Sad people had no problem with the
red-green colour axis – they could distinguish these shades just like everyone
else. But when sad people saw blue or yellow shades, they looked more grey to
them than to other people.
Hence dopamine affects
the perception of colour. The Psychology
Today journal states that dopamine is a neurotransmitter that helps control
the brain’s reward and pleasure centers. It regulates movement and emotional
responses. Dopamine is a factor in mood disorders, but now scientists know that
dopamine also affects how people see colours too. It dims a sad person’s world.
In 1965 Mick Jagger
and Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones wrote a song called ‘Blue Turns to
Grey’ with the following lyrics – 50 years later scientists prove it:
So now that she is
gone
You won’t be sad for
long
For maybe just an hour
or just a moment
Of the day
Then blue turns to
grey
And try as you may
You just don’t feel
good
You don’t feel alright
And you know that you
must find her, find her, find her
You think you’ll have
a ball
And you won’t care at
all
You’ll find another
girl or maybe more
To pass the time away
Then blue turns to
grey
And try as you may
You just don’t feel
good
You don’t feel alright
And you know that you
must find her, find her, find her
She’s not home when
you call
So you can go to all
The places where she
used to go
But she has gone away
Then blue turns to
grey
And try as you may
You just don’t feel
good
You don’t feel alright
And you know that you
must find her, find her, find her
Blue turns to grey
(blue turns to grey)
She has gone away
(blue turns to grey)
I feel so bad (blue
turns to grey)
I wish you’d come on
home (blue turns to grey)
I feel, I feel so down
…
Update: November 11, 2015
RETRACTION:
On November 5, 2015,
the authors of the study at the University of Rochester in America retracted
their research that stated that sadness affects colour perception. They said
that errors in how they structured the experiment skewed the results. There
were problems such as : (1) claiming that the interaction between video
condition and colour axis existed without testing this interaction, and (2) not
testing participants’ colour perception before the study as a comparison.
The editor of Psychological
Science journal that published the study said that the authors noted their
mistake and retracted the work swiftly. The editor said the retraction was due
to ‘honest mistakes.’
The researchers plan
to re-do the experiment.
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