Scarlet
Shaboom! A loud blast collapsed the street, shaking the walls and rattling the windows. Sirens howled from every corner, alarms danced on and off like a disco reflection, and the neighborhood filled with both wonder and awe. Suddenly, police cars roared in, their alarm lights cutting through the night and speakers screaming evacuation orders.
Alright, let me stop you here with a question: What colour did you imagine your alarm to be?
It’s red, red and red! Or as Mehmet Murat Ildan claims, “wear red and just be silent, red always speaks on behalf of you!” Each and every object that we perceive in daily life contains colour, and colour is ubiquitous in our perceptual world.
Red is complex. It’s more than just an aesthetic value, it also carries communicative weight, with different associations and meanings. And this ain't unique to humans. In many non-human animals, including several species of ape, red on a conspecific is interpreted as a threat cue, signalling the dominance and/or attack-readiness of an opponent. So… are we kinda biologically wired to see red as danger?
Either way, red is used in language to refer to problematic situations, like “red flag” or “caught red-handed”, and predominantly as the colour of stop signs and sirens. Even the angry face emoji dresses red; 😡.
In one study, participants were most likely to mistakenly categorise a non-danger symbol as danger related when it was presented on a red, relative to green or grey, background, which provided strong evidence of a red–danger association. This may have been a random evolution that collectively became deeply embodied. Yet, red elicits an anxiety state, causing a higher level of brain activity regarding perception or attention than other colours like blue or green. Anxiety creates an attentional bias towards threats, and individuals are most likely to mistakenly categorise a non-danger symbol as danger related when it is presented in red.
TL;DR! Red flirts, Red yells, Red drags: ‘come over, bb,’ while actually communicating, ‘come over, baby… I’m about to drill your soul.’ Just like any other inner voice, which we can’t help but love.
Come to think of it, our daily life is relatively colour-coded too, and red almost always yells: “Timber!”
For instance, stoplights? Red means freeze. Banks? “In the red” means broke. Relationships? “Red flags” signal danger ahead. Hospitals? “Code red” isn’t a lipstick shade.
From our personal life at home to the edge of the outside world, red is an attention vampire, since the effect of colour tends to take place outside of conscious awareness, and its effects tend to persist, even if they have (undetected) inimical implications. In short, colour represents a nonlexical visual stimulus that can convey important information. In this context, red takes on the meaning of threat and dominance in physical contests.
But red is complex! Along this crusade of horror and demand, red whispers the colour of desire. Among many species, red is an evolved biological signal of attractiveness and in the context of food, it means ripe fruits. Humankind is no different. A study claimed that women and men wearing red clothes are regarded by the opposite sex as more desirable. In a nutshell, red means attention again!
Colour has come to play an important role in communication, and among them all, red is a cognitive cue. From provoking people to feel excited to biasing our judgment in favour of danger, the colour red carries meaning, and this has a direct and automatic influence on cognitive processes, including attention. Although, in some contexts, the same colour can communicate different messages; in both emotional extremes red signals the presence of a significant stimulus and thus should require an attentional shift towards it.
Sources
Pravossoudovitch, Karyn, et al. "Is Red the Colour of Danger? Testing an Implicit Red–Danger Association." The Journal of General Psychology, vol. 141, no. 3, 2014, pp. 167–182.
Yoto, Ai, et al. "Effects of object color stimuli on human brain activities in perception and attention referred to EEG alpha band response." Journal of physiological anthropology 26.3 (2007): 373-379.
Koniecki, Michał, Joanna Pilarczyk, and Szymon Wichary. "The Color Red Attracts Attention in an Emotional Context: An ERP Study." Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, vol. 11, 2017, p. 1–12. Frontiers, doi:10.3389/fnhum.2017.00448.
Devine, Patricia, and Ashby Plant, editors. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. 1st ed., Academic Press, 2012.
Cover Image
Kajetan Sosnowski, Red Painting
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kajetan_Sosnowski,_Red_Painting.jpg
Author Kajetan Sosnowski
