In blue we trust

Today, I want to talk about a topic of perennial interest: color. Color psychology has a long history and has grown into a huge and thorny research area over the decades (see here for a recent academic review). Every few years, a new, counter-intuitive finding makes a big splash, only to shrivel under the bright spotlight of replication attempts. 

There have been some truly weird findings. As an example, there’s debate about whether women are more likely to wear red and pink around the time they ovulate. I’m not even kidding! There was initial evidence in favor, followed by subsequent evidence not in favor. It very well may be that the positive findings are due to choices under researchers’ discretion when analyzing data, an issue that Andrew Gelman explained in non-science-English in Slate. 

The tangled web of color findings keeps on growing. But within this web, good old blue remains steady and true.

Big Blue and co.

Doesn’t it feel like a lot of companies’ logos and branding look the same? “Classic” brands like GE or Ford, old and new media companies like USA Today and Facebook, and even newer direct-to-consumer brands like Casper and Ritual vitamins all use the color blue.

And indeed, blue is the most commonly used color in the logos of the world’s top 100 brands (here’s last year’s list if you want to check out how often it appears). 

Why? There might be good reason for this. People like and and feel good about blue.

Decades of studies find that we have pretty consistent color preferences. All around the world, we tend to like blue, and to dislike olivey dark yellow. (But there are some notable cultural exceptions. For example, Ancient Romans apparently avoided blue because it was a prominent color of their enemies, the Celts). These near-universal preferences come about because in our environment, many blue things, like clear water and skies, are good, and many dark yellow things, like rotting food and waste, are not. 

We’ve talked about metaphorical associations before. For example, there’s a link between light and goodness, and between the right and goodness. Blue is another goodie.

We tend to associate the color blue with positive traits and feelings. For example, an early study found that people tend to associate blue, above other colors, with feelings like ‘secure, comfortable’, ‘tender, soothing,’ and ‘calm, peaceful, and serene’. Looking at blue is pleasant.

Image source. In modern times, blue is the world’s favorite color.

In brand logos, blue is associated with trust and competence. For example, people perceive brands with (fictitious) blue logos as more competent. 

The same effect holds for real logos. For real-life brands with blue logos, people perceive the brand’s competence to be higher when the logo is pictured in color (vs. grayscale). This effect doesn’t hold for brands with red logos.

Image source, annotations added. People perceive brands to be more competent when they see a blue (vs. grayscale) logo.

Blue spaces

The positive effect of blue doesn’t end at logos. A similar effect extends to spaces.

In a study of simulated blue and red retail shops, participants made more purchases, postponed fewer purchases, and wanted to shop and browse more in blue than in red stores. And there were similar results in a different study comparing blue and orange simulated shops — participants liked blue shops more, and reported a greater likelihood of shopping and making purchases in the blue condition.

Blue is good in non-physical spaces, too. One study compared online stores with either blue or green design elements (the website content was otherwise the same). People trusted the blue store more than the green, and around two out of three people preferred to make their purchase from the blue store.

Another, broader, study, tested how much people trusted finance, legal, and medical websites with design elements in one of four colours: red, blue, green, or black. These three website industries were chosen since they represent relatively risky choices people have to make — no-one wants to get scammed when it comes to money, law, or health. 

Across website industries (finance, legal, medical), people believed the blue websites to be the most trustworthy. In a follow-up question, the experimenters asked people to select an ideal website color for each of the three industries. The top choice for all was blue, though the runners-up varied by industry: green for finance and medicine, and black for legal websites.

Aside from trust, blue websites have other unexpected positives. Like that they appear to load faster. One study compared how people perceived blue vs. yellow as well as blue vs. red websites. While all websites took as long to load (17 seconds), people believe that the blue websites loaded faster. They also felt that the blue websites were more relaxing. Finally, people were more likely to recommend the real estate company whose website they were ostensibly interacting with to a friend if they saw the blue website.

Whether in physical space or online, you can’t lose with blue.