page_title: Color psychology
section_title: Attracting attention
hierarchical_section_title: Color psychology / Brand meaning / Attracting attention
caption_attribution_description: English: Sign of a goldsmith in Yaowarat Bangkok's biggest Chinatown
context_page_description: Color psychology is the study of hues as a determinant of human behavior. Color influences perceptions that are not obvious, such as the taste of food. Colors have qualities that can cause certain emotions in people. Colors can also enhance the effectiveness of placebos. For example, red or orange pills are generally used as stimulants. How color influences individuals may differ depending on age, gender, and culture. For instance, heterosexual men tend to report that red outfits enhance female attractiveness, while heterosexual females deny any outfit color impacting that of men. Although color associations can vary contextually between cultures, color preference is to be relatively uniform across gender and race.
  Color psychology is also widely used in marketing and branding. Marketers see color as important, as color and can influence a consumers' emotions and perceptions about goods and services. Logos for companies are important since the logos can attract more customers. This happens when customers believe the company logo matches the personality of the goods and services, such as the color pink heavily used on Victoria's Secret branding.
context_section_description: Color is used as a means to attract consumer attention to a product that then influences buying behavior. Consumers use color to identify for known brands or search for new alternatives. Variety seekers look for non-typical colors when selecting new brands. Attractive color packaging receives more consumer attention than unattractive color packaging, which can then influence buying behavior. A study that looked at visual color cues focused on predicted purchasing behavior for known and unknown brands. Participants were shown the same product in four different colors and brands. The results showed that people picked packages based on colors that attracted their voluntary and involuntary attention. Associations made with that color such as 'green fits menthol', also affected their decision. Based on these findings implications can be made on the best color choices for packages. New companies or new products could consider using dissimilar colors to attract attention to the brand, but off-brand companies could consider using similar colors to the leading brand to emphasize product similarity. If a company is changing the look of a product, but keeping the product the same, they consider keeping the same color scheme since people use color to identify and search for brands. This can be seen in Crayola crayons, where the logo has changed many times since 1934, but the basic package colors, gold and green, have been kept throughout.
  Attention is captured subconsciously before people can consciously attend to something. Research looking at electroencephalography (EEGs) while people made decisions on color preference found brain activation when a favorite color is present before the participants consciously focused on it. When looking at various colors on a screen people focus on their favorite color, or the color that stands out more, before they purposefully turn their attention to it. This implies that products can capture someone's attention based on color, before the person willingly looks at the product.
  In interactive design and behavioral design, color is used to develop visual hierarchies where colors are placed into saliency hierarchies that match other hierarchies. Examples include matching a color hierarchy to a navigational structure hierarchy, or matching a behavioral science hierarchy to the most salient colors in a visual hierarchy, to increase the odds that important behavior change principles are noticed by a target audience and processed by them.
caption: A store sign painted mainly red on a street in Bangkok to attract attention from passers-by
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