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Mediation of the negative effect of red on intellectual performance
Markus A Maier1, Andrew J Elliot, Stephanie Lichtenfeld
1Department of Psychology, University of Munich, Munich. maier@edupsy.uni-muenchen.de
Abstract:
This research examines the hypothesis that an attentional process grounded in avoidance motivation-local relative to global processing-mediates the negative effect of red on intellectual performance. This hypothesis was tested in a series of experiments using two approaches to documenting mediation. Experiment 1 established that the perception of red undermines IQ test performance. Experiments 2a and 2b documented mediation via the experimental causal chain approach, and Experiment 3 documented mediation via the measurement of mediation approach. This represents the first demonstration of a mediational process in the domain of color psychology. A call is made to broaden priming research to include color stimuli.
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