The popular phrase that we see everything gray when we are sad would make much more sense in light of a new finding by researchers at the University of Rochester, in the United States, whose results have been published in the journal Psychological Science .
The study used 127 volunteers, who were divided into three groups at random : the first observed a comedy to provoke a happy and fun mood; the second, saw a dramatic movie with a tearful ending; and the third group remained as a control group without visualizing anything.
The researchers showed the volunteers 48 consecutive color swatches and asked them to indicate which main color (red, yellow, green or blue) they belonged to.
The results suggest that those who were induced to feel sad were less accurate in identifying colors on the blue-yellow axis compared to those who were emotionally neutral or even those who were induced to feel joy. As Christopher Thorstenson , study leader, explains:
Our results show that mood and emotions can affect the way we view the world around us. Our work advances the study of perception by showing that sadness specifically affects the basic visual processes that are involved in the perception of color.
Image | Joepenna