Looking on the Bright Side: Replicating the Association between Brightness and Positivity

Author(s)

Eva Specker, Helmut Leder

Abstract

The present study is a pre-registered replication of a study by Specker et al. (2018) that tests the hypothesis that brightness of colors is associated with positivity. Our results showed an implicit association between brightness and positivity in both Study 1 and Study 2, however, an explicit association between brightness and positivity was only found in Study 2, thereby replicating 3 out of 4 effects. To investigate these effects in more detail, we present a meta-analysis of both the original and the replication study. This indicated a large effect 1.31 [1.12, 1.51]. In addition, we used meta-analysis to assess potential moderators of the effect, in particular stimulus type (chromatic vs. achromatic) and measure type (implicit vs. explicit). This indicated that the effect is stronger when measured implicitly than when measured explicitly and that the effect is stronger when achromatic stimuli are used. In sum, we take these findings to indicate that there is a strong and replicable association between brightness and positivity. These findings offer researchers interested in the effect concrete tools when designing a study investigating the effect with regard to effect size estimates for power analysis as well as stimulus and measurement design.

Organisation(s)

Department of Cognition, Emotion, and Methods in Psychology, Department of Art History

Journal

Collabra: Psychology

Volume

4

No. of pages

8

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.168

Publication date

2018

Peer reviewed

Yes

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

501001 General psychology, 501011 Cognitive psychology, 501006 Experimental psychology

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Psychology(all)

Portal url

https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/looking-on-the-bright-side-replicating-the-association-between-brightness-and-positivity(b4d58a4b-8228-40e5-9273-9a0a72f29b65).html