A Study on the Influence of Light Color in Trust-Based Decision-Making

Color and light color stimuli have already been proven to be able to impact humans on a psychological and physiological level. Although, depending on the context it can have different degrees of influence, which means that color impact can end up being so subtle it becomes irrelevant, or so strong it ends up being a key factor to consider. Understanding possible implications of light colors can allow informed choices in the endeavor of improving experiences and interaction by using inherent elements of a design, like lightning and color. Thus, the present study aims to evaluate if light color is an influencing factor in people's trust when it comes to social and interpersonal decision-making, - trust in others, trust based conflict resolution, and relationship choices - and if gender is a differentiation factor. To this end two independent groups were used, one to test the red light and the other the green light. The influence of the light was tested by inserting the participants in a controlled environment with a single red or green light source and presenting them with trust based narratives that depicted decisions made by a fictional character. Their taskwas to rank the character's decisions using an agreement scale. The results show that light color can have a influence on trust depending on context, especially in cases where emotions are heightened by stressing factors, and that gender is a differentiation element, with male's trust based decisions being influenced by color, but not females.