Emotion

2013, Vol. 13, No. 3, 375379

2013 American Psychological Association

1528-3542/13/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0031821

BRIEF REPORT

Joint Effects of Emotion and Color on Memory

Christof Kuhbandner and Reinhard Pekrun

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University of Munich
Numerous studies have shown that memory is enhanced for emotionally negative and positive information relative to neutral information. We examined whether emotion-induced memory enhancement is
influenced by low-level perceptual attributes such as color. Because in everyday life red is often used as
a warning signal, whereas green signals security, we hypothesized that red might enhance memory for
negative information and green memory for positive information. To capture the signaling function of
colors, we measured memory for words standing out from the context by color, and manipulated the color
and emotional significance of the outstanding words. Making words outstanding by color strongly
enhanced memory, replicating the well-known von Restorff effect. Furthermore, memory for colored
words was further increased by emotional significance, replicating the memory-enhancing effect of
emotion. Most intriguingly, the effects of emotion on memory additionally depended on color type. Red
strongly increased memory for negative words, whereas green strongly increased memory for positive
words. These findings provide the first evidence that emotion-induced memory enhancement is influenced by color and demonstrate that different colors can have different functions in human memory.
Keywords: emotion, color, memory, von Restorff effect, isolation effect

ening, information (e.g., alarms, warning signals), whereas green

signals security and safety (Travis, 1991). Given the ubiquity of
such color usage in everyday life, red and green might have
acquired the function of implicit cues alerting the perceiver to
imminent danger or potential benefits, which might, in turn, intensify the impact of negative, respectively positive, information
(e.g., Bower, 1981). Indeed, first evidence in the domain of stimulus categorization suggests that emotional connotations of red and
green can differentially influence emotional processing. Valence
judgments seem to be speeded up when negative words are presented in red and positive words in green (Moller, Elliot, & Maier,
2009). Accordingly, it might be that red and green differentially
enhance memory for negative and positive stimuli.
The aim of the present study was to examine color influences on
emotion-induced memory enhancement. In order to establish a
situation in which colors are experienced as important signals, we
presented lists of black-colored words to participants that contained one critical word that stood out from the context by color.
To examine the effects of different colors on memory for emotional information, the critical word was either colored red, green,
or (as a control color) blue, and either neutral, negative, or positive
(see Figure 1A). It is well-known that memory for perceptually
outstanding information is generally enhanced, a phenomenon
called the von Restorff or isolation effect (von Restorff, 1933; see
Hunt, 1995, for a review). Surprisingly, although colors have often
been used in previous research to make stimuli outstanding, to our
knowledge neither the memory effects of different colors nor the
memory effects of emotional significance of perceptually outstanding stimuli have been addressed in previous research.
We expected that making words outstanding by color would
generally enhance memory for these words, replicating the typical

One prominent factor influencing the likelihood of remembering

information is emotional salience. Numerous studies have shown
that recall rates are higher for emotionally negative and positive
stimuli compared with neutral stimuli. The findings were consistent across a variety of stimuli types, including words, sentences,
and pictures (see, e.g., Hamann, 2001, and Reisberg & Heuer,
2004, for reviews). Given the robustness of emotion-induced
memory enhancement, an interesting question arises: Are there any
low-level stimulus features that can influence the effect of emotional salience on memory? An answer to this question would also
be of relevance for applied fields in which it is important to
effectively visualize information.
One low-level stimulus property that might influence memory
for emotional information is color. In everyday life, colors are not
used arbitrarily. Instead, there are regularities in the usage of
colors to convey information about situational requirements, such
as the usage of red and green to signal stop and go. The colors
red and green seem also to have relevance in emotional contexts.
Typically, red is used as a signal for negative, especially threat-

This article was published Online First March 25, 2013.

Christof Kuhbandner and Reinhard Pekrun, Department of Psychology,
University of Munich, Munich, Germany.
This research was supported by a grant entitled Developmental and
Educational Neurosciences awarded to B. Sodian and R. Pekrun from the
program LMUexcellent within the framework of the German Excellence
Initiative. We thank Alexandra Mller for collecting the data.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Christof
Kuhbandner, Department of Psychology, University of Munich, Leopoldstrasse 13, 80802 Munich, Germany. E-mail: christof.kuhbandner@
psy.lmu.de
375

KUHBANDNER AND PEKRUN

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376

Figure 1. Example of one experimental trial. (A) Participants were presented sequences of 12 words containing
11 neutral black words and 1 red, green, or blue colored word that was either emotionally neutral, negative, or
positive. (B) Memory performance as a function of serial position and color of the outstanding word for neutral
(left panel), negative (middle panel), and positive words (right panel). Note that the outstanding word was
actually randomly presented at serial position 5, 6, 7, or 8 (shaded in gray); the black baselines show memory
performance for black neutral words presented at the same serial positions.

von Restorff effect. Moreover, we expected that emotional significance of the perceptually outstanding words would further increase the von Restorff effect. Such a combined effect of color and
emotional significance would demonstrate that emotional salience
can enhance memory beyond the memory-enhancing effect of
perceptual salience. However, if red and green differentially influence memory for negative and positive information, then there
should be an interaction between the effects of color and emotional
salience. Negative words should be remembered best when colored
red, whereas positive words should be remembered best when
colored green.

Method
Participants
Forty-eight undergraduate students (42 females, mean age
22.6 years, SD 4.2) at a German university participated for
course credit. All participants were tested individually and were
not red green colorblind.

Materials and Procedure

Participants were asked to study and recall 30 successively
presented lists of words. Twenty-seven of the lists contained 11
black-colored words and one red-, green-, or blue-colored word.

The colored word of a list was randomly presented at the 5th, 6th,
7th, or 8th serial position, and the mean memory performance for
black words across these positions was used as a baseline for the
colored words. The remaining three lists contained only black
words to include an additional control condition. Memory performance for black words presented at the 5th, 6th, 7th, or 8th serial
position did not differ between lists containing one colored word
and lists containing only black words, t(47) 0.89, p .376.
All words were five- to six-letter German nouns. The black words
were randomly drawn from a pool of 333 neutral words (taken
from the CELEX database using WordGen v1.0 software toolbox;
Duyck, Desmet, Verbeke, & Brysbaert, 2004). The colored words
were randomly drawn from a pool of 27 words that differed in
emotional valence (see the Appendix). Nine of the colored words
were negative, nine were positive, and nine were neutral. The three
types of colored words were matched on word length and word
frequency (Google Ngram Viewer; Michel et al., 2011).
Three of the words of an emotional type were presented in red,
three in green, and three in blue. The assignment of colors to these
words was counterbalanced across participants. The colorimetric
properties of the three colors were chosen using a spectrometer
(i1Pro, X-rite Inc., Grandville, Michigan) according to the LCh
color model. In order to account for possible confounding effects
of lightness and chroma, red, green, and blue hues were selected
that were equal on the parameters L and C (red: LCh[47.0, 63.1,

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COLOR AND EMOTIONAL MEMORY

14.9], green: LCh[47.2, 61.9, 152.2], blue: LCh[47.3, 61.8,

263.1]). In this way, colors were chosen that were equally perceptually different from black (red: E 78.7; green: E 77.9;
blue: E 77.7).
All study words were presented for 1.5 s without an interstimulus interval. Immediately after studying each list, participants were
asked to recall the words of the list in any order for 45 s. The order
of list presentation was randomized. After studying and recalling
10 lists, there always was a short break of 1 min. After the
experiment, in order to assess the emotional valence of the words,
participants were presented the colored words (in black color),
again with the instruction to rate their valence on a scale ranging
from 1 (very unpleasant) to 5 (very pleasant). To take into account
the possibility that the prior study and recall of the words might
have affected participants ratings of valence, and to determine
whether negative and positive words also differed in arousal, we
additionally asked eight independent judges (of the same age
group and from the same population as the experimental participants) to rate each word on valence (1 extremely unpleasant to
7 extremely pleasant) and arousal (1 low arousal to 7 high
arousal).

Results
Emotional Ratings
As indicated by the ratings of the participants, the three emotional types of colored items varied significantly in their emotional
ratings. Compared with neutral words (M 3.17), negative words
were rated much more unpleasant (M 1.31), t(47) 32.18, p
.001, d 4.85,1 and positive words much more pleasant (M
4.66), t(47) 33.27, p .001, d 5.03. This difference in
valence was confirmed by the ratings of the independent judges.
Compared with neutral words (M 3.91), negative words were
rated much more unpleasant (M 1.32), t(7) 25.64, p .001,
d 9.38, and positive words much more pleasant (M 6.44),
t(7) 16.79, p .001, d 6.00. The arousal ratings of the
independent judges revealed that both negative words (M 5.68)
and positive words (M 6.03) were rated as more arousing than
neutral words (M 2.72), t(7) 6.84, p .001, d 2.45, and
t(7) 9.67, p .001, d 3.92, respectively. Arousal did not
differ between negative and positive words, t(7) 1.52, p
.172, d 0.60.

Effects of Color and Emotional Valence

Memory performance as a function of serial position, color of
the critical word, and emotional valence is shown in Figure 1B.
Memory for words standing out by color was generally much
higher compared with black words presented at the same serial
positions, all ts 4.80, all ps .001. To examine the effects of
emotion and color type on memory for words standing out by
color, an analysis of variance with the factors color type (red,
green, blue) and emotional valence (negative, positive, neutral)
was conducted. The analysis revealed significant main effects of
color type, F(2, 94) 4.51, p .013, p2 .09, and emotional
valence, F(2, 94) 24.93, p .001, p2 .35. Both red and green
words were better remembered than blue words, t(47) 2.77, p
.008, d 0.40, and t(47) 2.29, p .027, d 0.34, respectively,

377

and both negative and positive words were better remembered than
neutral words, t(47) 5.84, p .001, d 0.84, and t(47) 5.54,
p .001, d 0.80, respectively. However, these main effects
were qualified by a significant Color Type Emotional Valence
interaction, F(4, 188) 5.38, p .001, p2 .10. Whereas
memory for neutral words was not influenced by color, F(2, 94)
1.41, p .25, memory for negative words was boosted by red
color, compared with green color, t(47) 4.08, p .001, d
0.59, and blue color, t(47) 3.16, p .003, d 0.46. By contrast,
memory for positive words was boosted by green color, compared
with red color, t(47) 2.68, p .010, d 0.39, and blue color,
t(47) 3.44, p .001, d 0.50.

Discussion
The present findings demonstrate that emotion-induced memory
enhancement can be influenced by color. We employed a typical
von Restorff paradigm in which participants memory for words
standing out from the context by color was examined. Replicating
the von Restorff effect, we found that memory for colored words
was strongly enhanced. Furthermore, in line with previous findings
documenting emotion-induced memory enhancement, our results
showed that memory for colored words was further increased by
emotional significance. Both negative and positive words were
better remembered than neutral words. Finally, most intriguingly,
our findings demonstrate that the memory-enhancing effect of
emotional significance is differentially influenced by different
colors. Red strongly enhanced memory for negative words,
whereas green strongly enhanced memory for positive words.
This pattern of results mirrors the conventional use of red and
green in everyday life to signal that a situation is potentially
threatening or beneficial (Travis, 1991). Accordingly, based on
societal learning, red and green might function as implicit cues
alerting the perceiver to potential dangers or benefits, which might,
in turn, intensify the impact of negative, respectively positive,
information (Bower, 1981). Indeed, recent findings demonstrate
that viewing red can have effects that are typically observed in
threatening situations, such as a decreased heart rate variability
(Elliot, Payen, Brisswalter, Cury, & Thayer, 2011) or an enhanced
force and velocity of motor output (Elliot & Aarts, 2011). As most
of the recent studies on the effects of red on psychological functioning have used green only sometimes as a control color, conclusive evidence concerning the effects of green is lacking. However, a few studies on physiological reactions to different colors
suggest that green is associated with pleasant, low-arousal affective states (e.g., Jacobs & Hustmyer, 1974; Wilson, 1966), although these studiesin contrast to recent studies on the effects of
red did not control for confounding effects of lightness or
chroma.
The idea that colors having specific emotional connotations can
influence emotional processing is also supported by previous studies on emotional valence judgments. For instance, it has been
shown that valence judgments are speeded up when negative
words are presented in black, and positive words in white, a pattern
reflecting the tendency of people to view dark colors as negative
and light colors as positive (Meier, Robinson, & Clore, 2004;
1
To account for repeated measures, all reported effect sizes were calculated using Morris and DeShons (2002) Equation 8.

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378

KUHBANDNER AND PEKRUN

Okubo & Ishikawa, 2011). Moreover, findings that were generally

consistent with the present results on memory effects were found
when manipulating hue instead of lightness. Compared with a
white baseline, red facilitated the evaluation of negative words and
green the evaluation of positive words (Moller et al., 2009).
However, the effect of green seemed to be restricted to successrelated positive words, and red seemed not only to facilitate
valence judgments for negative words but also to impair valence
judgments for positive words (compared with the white baseline).
The findings for positive words are difficult to interpret, however.
Moller and colleagues used white as a baseline color, which has
been shown to facilitate evaluative judgments of positive words as
well (Meier et al., 2004; Okubo & Ishikawa, 2011). Accordingly,
the use of a positively biased color baseline may have masked
stronger effects of green.
One noteworthy aspect of the present results is that emotioninduced memory enhancement was found, although both emotional and neutral von Restorff words were highly distinct from the
other words in terms of perceptual salience. This finding demonstrates that emotional salience can enhance memory over and
above the memory-enhancing effect of perceptual salience. Moreover, the additional finding of valence-specific effects of different
colors indicates that emotional and perceptual salience can interact
to produce memory enhancement. One interesting question, however, is whether differential effects of colors would still be present
in situations where color is a perceptually less salient signal.
Findings on the effects of red in achievement contexts indicate that
red can evoke fear of failure, even when presented as a rather
subtle cue (Elliot, Maier, Moller, Friedman, & Meinhardt, 2007).
These findings suggest that red and green could also differentially
enhance emotional memory, even when color is not particularly
salient. However, to the extent that valence-specific effects of
different colors reflect their conventional use in everyday life to
signal potential threats or benefits, it may also be that these
differential effects are only found when colors are experienced as
important signals. Thus, the valence-specific effects of red and
green on emotion-induced memory enhancement might vanish
when employing memory paradigms that do not contain a
signaling effect, such as presenting lists of words in which
each word is shown in a different color. Indeed, determining the
role of salience in the interplay between color and emotional
significance would be an important direction for future research.
Our findings suggest that red primarily carries negative meaning
and that green primarily carries positive meaning. There may be
some boundary conditions, however. First, it remains to be shown
whether the effects of red and green generalize across cultures.
Although red and green are similarly used in a variety of cultures,
it may be that effects of color depend on the color coding conventions of a culture. However, at least for red, there is evidence that
there might be even a biological-based predisposition to interpret
red as a danger signal (e.g., Khan, Levine, Dobson, & Kralik,
2011), which would suggest that similar effects of colors might be
observed across different cultures. Second, recent findings suggest
that, in specific contexts, red can also carry positive meanings, for
instance, in the context of sexual attraction (e.g., Elliot & Niesta,
2008). Thus, it might be that there are specific types of positive
words that also benefit from red, such as, for example, erotic

words. Indeed, exploring the context specificity of color effects is

an important avenue for future research.
Our findings may also have more general implications for the
use of colors in experimental research on emotion cognition interactions. In several experimental paradigms, colors are traditionally used in arbitrary ways to signify specific conditions. For
instance, in experiments on voluntary forgetting of emotional
memories, red has typically been used as a forget cue, whereas
green has been used as a remember cue (e.g., Depue, Banich, &
Curran, 2006; Murray, Muscatell, & Kensinger, 2011). Given that
different colors can have differential effects on emotional processing, color type might represent a confounding variable in studies
that did not control for color effects. Finally, the results of the
present study may be of considerable importance for applied fields
as well. Current guidelines for choosing colors to effectively
visualize information refer to general stimulus features such as
distinctiveness or contrast (Ware, 2004). Our findings suggest that
it is important to also take differential effects of specific colors for
different types of information into account. Further exploring such
effects will be an important avenue for future research.

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Appendix
English Translation of the Original German Emotional Words

Neutral

Negative

Positive

Circle
Eagle
Fabric
Foil
Kiosk
Pen
Sign
Table

Crisis
Fear
Jail
Misery
Nazi
Tumor
War
Weapon

Friend
Fun
Holiday
Kisses
Laugh
Luck
Party
Winner

Note. In German language, the word length of all words ranged from five to six letters.

Received June 18, 2012

Revision received December 17, 2012
Accepted December 27, 2012