How colours affect the way you think

How colours affect the way you think Kan Taengnuanjan/Getty Images Colours can have a surprisingly powerful effect on the way we think Our world is awash with a rainbow of colours, but certain shades can have a surprising impact on our ability to concentrate, our mood and even the flavours we experience. "There was a study in 2015, conducted in a proper way under controlled conditions, that didn't find any evidence pink reduces aggressiveness," says Domicele Jonauskaite, a colour researcher at the University of Vienna, in Austria. It's important to be cautious around colours and nutrition, though – there is some evidence that colour can alter how we experience food, but not necessarily impact our consumption levels in the long term. "When I close my eyes, and think about softness, certain colours come to my mind – they're usually lighter ones, light pink, light blue," she says. "We wanted to understand how people's association with colour influences their expectations – so we could anticipate them, and design to match them, and so make it easier to interpret," she says.