Color War. Does Color Influence the Perception of Political Messages?
Articles
Overview
published in
- PSYCHOLOGICAL REPORTS Journal
publication date
- July 2022
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
- 0033-2941
Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)
- 1558-691X
abstract
- Several studies have shown that exposure to colors affects cognitive and affective processes. In this paper, we tried to find if colors affect the perception of political messages and activate partisan biases. We focus our study on the Spanish cultural environment. In a prestudy (n = 991), participants identified red as progressive, blue as conservative, and gray as neutral. In two subsequent experiments (n = 840; n = 938), we analyzed how these three colors influenced the interpretation of political messages and confronted them with issues ownership. The results show that the colors can activate partisan biases but do not have the same strength as issues ownership.