New paper from our Team! Investigating the impact of colours on the levels of physiological arousal - a VR study of coloured environments.

In a recent paper published in The Royal Society Publishing, Domicele Jonauskaite and Christine Mohr, in collaboration with Marieke Lieve Weijs, Ricarda Reutimann, and Bigna Lenggenhager, aimed to investigate the impact of colors in our environment on physiological arousal levels.

They immersed 60 participants in virtually designed rooms with walls of varying hues (blue or red), lightness, and saturation, and assesed physiological arousal levels through heart rate and skin conductance measures. The results demonstrate that both lightness and hue have an effect on physiological arousal levels. Heart rate increased and Heart Rate Variability decreased more in the darker rooms compared to the medium-light rooms, indicating a higher level of arousal in darker environments, regardless of hue. Additionally, skin conductance increased in the red room compared to baseline, suggesting an effect of the red hue on arousal. These findings suggest that the choice of colour parameters in virtual environments can be important, as it may influence physiological arousal levels.

For further details about the study and the protocol, you can access more information here.

See the full publication list of the Colour Experience Team under Publications.

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