Facilitation of creative performance by using blue and red accent lighting in work and learning areas

Abstract

Research has shown that colours influence motivation and cognitive performance. In achievement contexts, red evokes avoidance motivation that hinders creativity, while blue elicits an approach motivation that facilitates creativity. However, due to their position and mode of presentation, colours may convey a different message. Red accent lighting creates a cosy, friendly room atmosphere that may, even in an achievement context, elicit an approach rather than an avoidance motivation. Results (N = 146) showed that both blue and red accent light increased strategic approach motivation compared to white accent light. Moreover, through the heightened approach motivation, colourful accent light indirectly improved creative performance. Implications for future research on colour and practical implications for colour usage are discussed.

Practitioner Summary: Designing work environments for creativity is a new topic in ergonomics research and practice. The present study demonstrates indirect effects of coloured accent light on creativity providing interesting possibilities for the design of workplaces for knowledge workers, classrooms and all other rooms in which people work on new ideas.

Keywords:

• Coloured light
• accent light
• colour in context
• creativity
• approach motivation

Acknowledgements

This paper is based on research conducted by the first author in partial fulfilment of the requirements for a doctoral degree from the University of Hohenheim and supervised by the second author. The research was funded by the Gips-Schüle-Stiftung (www.gips-schuele-stiftung.de) within the graduate program People Inside (www.people-inside.de). The authors would like to express their gratitude to Jan de Boer for his helpful comments and Konrad Senf for proofreading this paper. We also thank our students for their help in collecting the data.

Notes

1. This paper is based on the fourth chapter of the doctoral dissertation (Kombeiz 2016), and is an extension of its theory, previous research, analyses and discussion.

2. Lighting condition did not affect participant’s regulatory focus and regulatory focus was not related to creative performance.

3. To test for potential biases, we repeated the analyses and separately included age and gender as covariates. The effect of coloured light on approach motivation and the indirect effect on creativity after controlling for these variables (all ps < .05, CIs did not include zero) remained significant. There were no interaction effects between lighting condition and sex, as well as between lighting condition and age (all ps > .05). Hence, the reported effects cannot be attributed to differences in age and sex. Analyses can be obtained from the first author.