Color-in-context

Humans interact with text and graphic information on a daily basis. These interactions represent learning environments, people are reading to learn. In this investigation, we addressed how text and graphics can be constructed to influence the construction of an individual’s understanding about a topic. We situated our investigation in the legal context, an under-studied context that aligns well with both text and graphic manipulations. Across three experiments we investigated the interaction of a framed text and a single graph on learners’ perceptions and decisions about the company. Results of Experiment 1 revealed that the presence of the gray graph decreased the effect of the framed texts on decisions of the company’s guilt. Experiments 2 and 3 built upon Experiment 1. In Experiments 2 and 3 we used the colors red and green to color the success (Experiment 2) or failure (Experiment 3) portion of the bar graph. Results of Experiment 2 revealed that when success was colored green compared to gray and the text was positive, learners’ had stronger arguments against the company. Experiment 3 revealed that decisions were not influenced when failure was colored red, green or all gray. However, results revealed that learners’ discussed marginally more negative implications of the company’s actions when the text was negative and failure was colored in red compared to gray. These results are provocative in that color is typically viewed as aesthetic only, however, our results support the growing literature that color is able to influence to human cognition.