Abi Beckram: The science of colour documentary notes

Red is deeply rooted in the human psyche; conjures love and danger
Wearing red; manipulates dominance?
Dr Russell Hill; investigated the olympic sport tiquando
Found that red and blue didn’t win equally; wearing red helped people win in a competitive situation
In manipulated footage, the judges tended to favour the red player
In football, top teams have worn red e.g. manchester and liverpool
Dr Ian Greenlees; skeptic
The players in the football experiment can’t know that red is being scrutinised
Does wearing red makes you feel stronger? Or does seeing red make you feel threatened?
Studied hormone results: didn’t detect any difference in testosterone, but people wearing red shirts had subtle levels of more confidence

Boe Lotter; red is seen as a warning
Set up three colour pods to test if colour affects our sense of time
Pods in red, white and blue
People asked to turn around when they thought it was a minute
Being bathed in red, it may give a sense of anxiety, whereas blue indicates more calmness
Colour can speed up time; in the blue pod, a minute lasted 11 seconds shorter
Red makes us highly aware of our environment; time slows down

Russell Foster a neuroscientist
Brown and red makes people hungry; featured in restaurants
Mark Hensman; experimented with blue lighting to make a place feel warm
Blue affected behaviour; people started to perk up
Body clock; link to cone cells?
A new cell in the human eye was discovered; photosynthesising cell
This cell sends a signal to wake you up, linked to the blue wavelength of light; explains why the blue woke people up

Professor Jay Wrights
The wizard of OZ; shift from black and white to colour
Life on earth is dependent on the energy of the sun; origins of humans - single cells avoided certain colour waves; early sensitivity to colour (blue and yellow)
Primates developed a structure in the eye to vision of red and green
Colours of fruit and warning signs in nature
Squirrel monkeys; red green colorblindness
Gave the monkeys new cones to see these colours; had a new colour sensation immediately
The monkeys learnt to associate food with colour; if the monkeys liked red fruit, then they would associate it with pleasure
Blue and yellow are emotionally hard wired into us
We had to learn red and green; more of a modern learning process
All colours are not equal

How do we create colour in the first place?
Boe fassinated with illusions
There is nothing literal about colour in the world
Your brain fixes light; colour constancy
Our concept of colour is based on object knowledge; e.g. we know bananas are yellow
Your brain creates colour based on knowledge of what things should look like
Individuals may have different ideas of colour, based on what objects they know/ what experiences they have
Languages may affect what we see; Anna Franklin
You are not automatically born with colour vision; it is developed over the first 3 months
In the english speaking world, we have 11 colours
The right side of the brain processes the colour categories

Scientists investigated a tribes conception of colour
Women in the tribe wear red on their bodies
They say the sky is black and water is white; the Himba have half the amount of colours we know
The Himba can distinguish colours easier; e.g. shades of green
It is harder for them to distinguish green and blues as they have the same word
Jules Davidoff; investigates language and how it affects how we see colour

Experiment of how we organise colour; people create structures associated to natural images we see every day
How does the way we feel effect colour we see?
People feeling powerful, were more sensitive to changes in colour
Women were more sensitive to men
Women with a stronger sense of control could see the world more accurately
We see green and yellow the same (evolutionary colours)

Abi Beckram