It's widely claimed that green helps depressives - a walk in the countryside, painting house walls green etc. But has anyone trialled the efficacy of various shades of green?
If anyone knows of such research, I'd be grateful for directions or even a link.
I'm not sure this much to do with authoring but I'm tempted to use the 'winning' shade of green for the new book covers.
AJ
It's widely claimed that green helps depressives
Green made me depressed. It was the color of my Army uniform, my Army pub tent, my Army poncho, my… well, maybe it was being in the Army that depressed me, but I still don't like green. Except on a golf course where I hated blue (water) or brown (desert).
I've been informed that 520 nm is the optimum wavelength, which correlates to #36ff00. Personally I think that's a bit too garish (and grasslike) for a book cover. I quite like the more understated 500 nm (#00ff92).
Oh well, I tried.
AJ
Does anyone know how to find out what the hex code is for the greenish background colour used for certain headings on the SOL homepage eg Stream, My Stream, Lists etc?
AJ
It's widely claimed that green helps depressives
What is widely claimed and what is actual medical science often aren't the same thing.
It is true that some very limited research has suggested that Research has shown that exposure to the colour green can reduce stress, improve mood, increase creativity, and enhance cognitive functioning. However, most modern research on this subject has been focused on green spaces in urban planning contributing to lower stress levels.
The idea that the colour green or expose to nature can be used to treat depression came out of the Biophilia hypothesis, an idea popular in the 1970s and 80s that "human attraction to other living things" (eg, liking pets), is related to our ancestral state as being part of nature, thus exposure to the colour green triggers a biophilic response.
It's worth noting that the at the time this idea of green being used to treat depression was suggested, the official medical definition of depression was:
296.2 Manic-depressive illness, depressed type ((Manic-depressive psychosis, depressed type))
This disorder consists exclusively of depressive episodes. These episodes are characterized by severely depressed mood and by mental and motor retardation progressing occasionally to stupor. Uneasiness, apprehension, perplexity and agitation may also be present.
When illusions, hallucinations, and delusions (usually of guilt or of hypochondriacal or paranoid ideas) occur, they are attributable to the dominant mood disorder. Because it is a primary mood disorder, this psychosis differs from the Psychotic depressive reaction, which is more easily attributable to precipitating stress. Cases incompletely labelled as "psychotic depression" should be classified
here rather than under Psychotic depressive reaction.
--- DSM-II (1968)
tl;dr: While taking a walk outside is likely to to be good for you, the whole green helps with depression idea is a weird pseudo-science remnant from a definition of depression that hasn't been used for over 4 decades.
I understand that the idea is still being trialled in modern times, although the data is very subject. How can you do a double-blind study with a placebo when almost everyone knows what the colour green looks like!
DSM-II - isn't that from before psychiatrists started to aggrandise their profession ;-)
AJ
How can you do a double-blind study with a placebo when almost everyone knows what the colour green looks like!
Comes down to how the study is structured and how instructions are given. For example, there's a rather famous (in certain very niche circles) study about how language affects understanding of colour.
The study is based on the fact that the Russian language has two words for blue, "goluboy" which refers to light blue and "siniy" which refers to dark blue. The two words are taught/learned early, at about the same age as other colours are learned.
So the study in question found two groups of participant, all university students in Boston. Group 1 spoke English as their first language and no other languages. Group 2 spoke Russian as their first language, were fluent in English, and spoke no other languages. All instructions were given in English and the study was conducted in English.
The set up was to show a participant a colour swatch from a palette with 30 shades of blue, take that swatch away, then after 30 seconds show them the palette and have them try to indicate the swatch that was shown. This is done several dozen times with each participant to create a sample set.
Result: Russian speakers are not any better, on average, at remembering a specific shade of blue than their English-speaking counterparts, but they are better at indicating which side the shade was on. Some people will be vary accurate, some very inaccurate, but Russian speakers, generally, will remember if the shade is light or dark regardless of whether they can recall the exact shade.
What this shows us is that simply learning a different language as a child influences how our brains interpret colour signals. Russians don't necessarily see blue differently than non-Russians, but they understand the concept of blue in a different way.
Obviously this is a very different kind of study, but my point is that modern psychology is very different than what most people thing it is. The media representation of psychology is mostly based on stuff that was outdated before the internet came along. Modern researchers have some very clever ways of studying complicated psychological phenomena without letting participants know what was actually being studied until after results have been collected.
Note: After a study you do need to tell all participants the nature of the study, especially if you misled them at the beginning. This is an ethical obligation in most countries.
based on the fact that the Russian language has two words for blue, "goluboy" which refers to light blue and "siniy" which refers to dark blue.
-- like 'blue' and 'indigo' then? I think the study designers need to go back to primary school and relearn the rainbow.
No, totally not indigo, that's purple. The two Russian blues are more like "blue" and "cyan" (голубой, funny that голубь = pigeon) where "cyan" is the typography blue, as in CMYK set, while blue is screen blue, as in RGB set.
No, totally not indigo, that's purple
No totally not purple, that's red+blue. The traditional mnemonic for rainbow colours is
Richard of York gave battle in vain
although I've seen here 'Virgins in bed give you odd reactions' - note both have 'I' for indigo. Neither violet nor indigo can be represented in the RGB (or CMY) gamut; you need a (nearly) monochromatic source to excite the 'blue sensing' cones without significantly exciting the 'green sensing' cones. Violet also excites the 'red sensing' cones (which actually have a peak sensitivity in the yellow region) because there is an odd extra low peak in their spectral sensitivity at the violet end of the spectrum - which is why violet looks purple. To see indigo, play with a prism and beam of sunlight in a dark room - it's there, just before the fuzzy blacklight glow of true violet, an intense dark blue. The other end of the spectrum is interesting too - another colour that can't be represented on a monitor or in print, visible just above where the eye sensitivity drops off, where only the 'red sensing' cones are stimulated (which again is only possible with narrow bandwidth sources).
Whatever.
The point is, the distinction between the two Russian words for blue shades has nothing at all to do with indigo, with is far to the red from the pure blue синий with corresponds well with my understanding of English "blue", and the RGB blue peak. While the other word, the "pigeonish" color is either less saturated or way to the green, most easily referred to by cyan instead as far technical color names go.
Russian "blue sky" is голубое небо while the school uniform is dark intense blue синий. Neither of two has any notable red component in it. Indigo, or any approximations thereof, definitely do have, and everything even a little to the red of pure blue is "purple" for all people I know (in real life).
Russian isn't my native language, but have had to study it from age 7, against my will, and tolerate environments with significant percentage of native Russian speakers ever since. I still avoid writing it if I can, it's a pain, but I read freely, understand well, and can speak if needing. So, yes, I can't talk to the meanings of those words with the certainty of a native, but have had to develop fairly good concept about the possibilities of the meaning space of each.
To repeat, it's as much to do with, indeed, intensity and saturation of the color than, or rather not only, wavelength. The голубой is pale-blue, like the sky by the horizon, while
My native language (latvian) doesn't have a word for голубой/cyan either, it's all blue zils, until it's bluish-green zilganzaļš but that's already beyond cyan into the green. While even slightly reddish-blue is already
To add, imho the point of the research mentioned has only accidental relationship with actual (technical) shades of color, it's all about language use and perception. Most people do use language in their internal cognitive processes, at least on the surface level, and most probably it would be the native language (unless that forgotten, it can happen).
Russian has two words for shades of color that are effectively covered by singular "blue" in English (or Latvian). (Re-reading you it seems like your concept of "blue" also extends far further into the red too, than either my native, or my understanding of the Russian words for "blue" does.)
People who have additional words in their vocabulary to distinguish nuance where others don't, would use that facility to pigeonhole concepts and thus will have easier time to remember that difference. But it won't help beyond that provision of that watershed (with itself is fuzzy and may differ from person to person greatly). That's a seemingly very simple common sense ground truth, but to confirm that in a controlled manner is still remarkable.
To stress, words rarely if ever map lossless between languages, and sometimes seemingly same or very similar words are used for wastly different concepts between languages. One might try to claim the other language use a word incorrectly, but that only has merit in case of clear borrowing, and even then dubious.
has anyone trialled the efficacy of various shades of green
I found this study which only looks at a single colour of green (compared to white), but references other studies which may give more of what you want. The search I used has few other results that may lead to something useful (ETA: more are on 'green space', relevant to @Dicrostonyx's post), but I particularly liked the one on pill colour ("colour preferences ... did not reach levels of statistical significance").
I'd intended to comment on the difficulty in using green because the photosensitive protein has (at least) two variants (and both may be expressed for some females - it's coded on the X-chromosome), and further, the photosensitivity of 'rods' peaks in the green area of the spectrum at yet another wavelength (so, for tetrachromats at the correct light levels, there are three different 'green' peaks in sensitivity, so there could be as much variability of perception within 'green' as in full colour normal vision). I'd intended to get ahead of DS saying 'where's the evidence', but from one paper I found I've concluded 1/ the situation is even more confused/complicated than I thought, 2/ low light vision ('rods') aren't likely tied into colour perception, and 3/ the study designers are a bit blinkered (pun intended) as doing the study on the excluded population could return some interesting results.
The search I used has few other results that may lead to something useful, but I particularly liked the one on pill colour ("colour preferences ... did not reach levels of statistical significance").
Thank you. It's a small study and only lasted a week so it's not surprising it didn't turn up anything statistically significant. Personally I prefer my pills not to be green (or blue, for that matter).
A while back, I found an on-line test for colour differentiation. Apparently I'm bad at differentiating close shades of green, and I understand that's primarily a male problem.
AJ