Brigata Italia

Seeing Red

Margaret Miele is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) specializing in the Consumer, Industrial and Research aspects of Color. She works as an industry consultant and serves on the board of directors of the Inter Society Color Council (ISCC).

We were particularly intrigued by the class she teaches in the Psychology of Color, her knowledge about red, and are thankful that she granted us this interview.

Conducted + edited by: Robin Bates for Brigata Italia

Brigata Italia: Do people need color?

Margaret Miele: There is a good deal of evidence that people absolutely need color in terms of maintaining a certain level of health. A good deal of that has to do with psychological health, but it also spills into physical health as well, because of the mind/body connections. Without color and light that affords us the opportunity to see color, we really aren't operating at our best levels.

BI: Can you describe your course?

MM: I only have my students for one semester so I have a lot of ground to cover. What I generally do is start off the course by introducing them to a color system. The one I choose to use is the Munsell. That allows us to start operating from a color base or foundation so that we are working from the same place - color is so subjective in so many ways.

The first goal of the course to get us all operating from the same foundation. In the process of doing that I also begin to hone and perhaps enhance their color vision, their acuity and awareness of their color vision. Teaching the Psychology of Color is different than teaching other kinds of psychology, at least in my experience. Generally a teacher needs to open the students' minds and get new information in. But color is already in there. It has been a part of their lives for so long that they may not be as consciously aware of it as I need them to be. So I don't need to open their mind to get something new in there - I need to open their minds and bring that old stuff out so that they can look at it, so that they can come face to face with it so that they can begin process it in a more scientific a cognitive manner.

We practice with our color, and I give them color assignments to do. I cover a bit about the history of color, because if you look at the ancient world, color was really the communication system for groups of people. And before we had the kinds of communication systems that we have today there needed to be quick communication between people and groups of people. So color was the number one choice. Some of that is still persistent today. The stop light works the way it does for a certain reason - nothing would work quite as well.

We also talk about personality and color. There are ways in which we can understand the individual, by looking at how that individual uses color and what kinds of preferences they have for color. We look at color and its potential effects on physical attributes, such as can color increase or decrease your pulse, mood state, affect your ability to perform certain tasks. We do a lot of work with color in the modern world and its modern cultural meanings. I cover physiological things, personality things, as well as social issues. I try to end the course with some real applications of the course, so the students can do a survey of public opinion of color, and we do some analysis of advertising, packaging, food products, medications, you name it. We do an analysis the colors and how the colors are being used and is that use the best use...

BI: What kind of assignments or experiments do you do?

MM: A few years ago I had a group of students who wanted to look at the relationship between food and color because I had made the statement that the color of food is such a powerful thing that it is very hard for people to get past that. Our sense of the taste is so closely tied to the color...

BI: Yes - I know. I remember on St. Patrick's day my parents used to put green food coloring into everything and as far as I was concerned it did alter the taste for my brother and I...

MM: Yes - and perhaps on St. Patrick's Day we can eat green bagels because we are also drinking green beer ... but on any other day of the year you aren't going to see people eating green bagels.

The students took refrigerator biscuits that don't really have a strong flavor, except maybe for being a little salty, and brushed them with different food coloring, cut them up into bite-sized chunks, took a table outside the cafeteria and served them to students who were willing to do a "taste test." We had regular biscuits, meaning ones where they had not tampered with the color, and we had biscuits that we tinted red, yellow and light blue. Students were asked to evaluate the taste of these different biscuits, and in fact the red biscuit were rated as "spicier." (The blue was rated as the sweetest - which is what you would expect because there really is not blue food in nature, so blue things are man-made, which usually means sugar or candy.)

Another project I did with students another semester involved lipstick color. These students came from an illustration background, so they drew a standard female illustration that you might see in a New York Times ad. The only thing that varied from picture to picture was that the color of the lipstick was altered. Men were asked to respond to these pictures - there was a rating system and a series of question. The woman wearing the red lipstick was the one who was deemed, by far, the most desirable to date. Why? I think it goes into the fact that, if you want to think about it from an evolutionary perspective, that red around the face is an indication of being robust and healthy. On an low level, something less than conscious, it may be that that is "attractive" because she is the healthy one with whom to pass our genes on. But also in the modern world we associate red with passion and sexy things, so she may have come across as someone who would be more fun on a date. More willing to explore and enjoy...

BI: Can you speak about the color red?

MM: I think red has primary importance in terms of human response. Last year, around Valentine's Day, I recall reading an article where the author's contention was that if red has so many meaning, then in fact it means nothing. I was preparing a series of talks on the color red when I came across it, and I believe she is wrong. Yes, in fact, the color has a wide range of meaning. We have so many phrases in the English language - we have "paint the town red," which has to do with being very happy and expressing that in a joyful, good way, having a good time. We talk about seeing red, which means you are incredibly angry, you are gritting your teeth, and, of course, red associated with passionate or lustful love, and romantic love. But the thing is that human beings are capable of seeing many hundreds of different reds. Our capacity to distinguish reds is quite great... And generally speaking, our memory for reds is quite good.

BI: As opposed to other colors?

MM: Our memory for blue tends to be somewhat more vague. We can often go to the store and match reds more easily than we can match blue. So it occurs to me that it is not unusual that red would have so many meaning because it has so many variations.

But if you think about the range of meaning, they all have one thing in common - which is that whenever we feel something strongly, we feel it in red. If I love you, and I love you forever, and I am pledging my troth, that's red. It might be a different kind of red if I see you across the room and I want your body tonight, and then have a nice life. And it might be a different red than the one associated with nationalism and patriotism, but all of those things are felt so strongly.

BI: Why? Is there a visceral reaction to red?

MM: I think it is because of two things. There's a social level and a physiological level. On the social level, certainly red is blood, and blood mean so many things. Blood is health, it is also dangerous if blood is being spilt, and there's blood involved with sexual encounter, the blood of the virgin for instance, and the blood involved in childbirth. So blood is a very powerful image in the existence of human beings.

But there is also a physiological difference with color red, and I has to do with how our visual system processes the wavelengths that produce that label of red in our minds.

I just have to pause here and say something that usually distresses people, which is that essentially that color does not exist in the external world. Color exists in your head. So yes, you and I are both looking at this folder and it is purple, but we have been socialized to use that label when this physiological event occurs in our head.

Red is the longest wavelength that the human eye is capable of distinguishing. But, when we process this wavelength, the effect on the retina is that it tends to cast a larger image. When that information is then sent on into the brain, we are going to perceive red in a more emphasized way than we will other colors. So, as any woman who has ever struggled with her weight will know that when she wears red, she looks larger. And the stop light is red because it casts a larger image and so it should be a more compelling signal to use to put on our breaks.

BI: You belong to the Inter Society Color Council (ISCC). It isn't race relations?

MM: Sometimes people think Psychology of Color is about race - I always have to say, no, it's red/green/yellow. But the ISCC is a very interesting professional groups - I am on the board of directors and I would only utilize my time on something I think it was worthwhile - and it certainly is one of my favorites. Because they are not profession specific. Inter societal means that people come from a variety of backgrounds, so the membership of this group might include fine arts, psychology, chemists, physicists, pigment manufacturers, automobile manufacturers, and many more. The idea was that someone over here working in advertising, and someone over here working in psychology or in manufacturing may be struggling with problems that are similar, or may have encountered an issue that relates to someone else and worked their way around it, so why not have a dialogue?

BI: What are color problems? What are red color problems?

MM: Color problems! For instance, you have something on your monitor just the way you like it, you send it to someone else and it is not the same any longer. That's a color problem that affects the lives of many people. The reality is that we may work in an somewhat isolated world, meaning that the people with whom we are cooperating on any given project many not be next door or down the hall, but could be thousands of miles away, so as we need to exchange information, we need to have ways to make sure that the color information is not allowed to shift, that it remains stable. This is very tricky.

One of the things that is a heightened color problem with red has to do with the consumer's response, because people are so able to discern red, so be picky - people will love one shade and be horrified by the next. And going back to the fact that colors exist in our heads as a result of reflection, when objects are at different angles they will reflect the light differently. Because of experience of color depends on how the light is reflected, if you have something that is at a 90-degree angle and something else at a 45-degrees angle or some other variation, I can cause the perception of that color to appear different even if it is ostensibly the same.

Thus if you take a complex piece of machinery, a dashboard, for instance, or this keyboard that has a lot going on, things protruding, and is made up of a variety of materials, some plastic, has keys at different heights and angles, and a flat backgrounds ..if I were trying to do this in red, make sure that everything is exactly the same red, well, when that reaches the consumer - which might be me sitting at my desk, the keyboard may start to look mismatched. Things have different dimensionalities, and at my desk where I prefer to use lamps that highlight work spaces, the shadow would create the experience that this keyboard is made of leftover parts, that is doesn't match at all, and I might send it back. And they could send me two or three and I would keep returning them. That's a color problem.

BI: How did you get into this field?

MM: By accident. I have my training as an industrial psychologist - which is someone who addresses him or herself to issues regarding work. A related issue is consumer behavior and learning. I did have consumer psychology background. When I was hired at FIT I was hired to teach industrial psychology, but a few years into my tenure here a group of majors got together and really felt very strongly that their students needed to have an understanding of the psychology of color in order to make them better designers - package designers, graphic designers, etc. So that group of majors approached our department and asked if we could put this together, and I was charged with implementing a course on the psychology of color. And the rest is history. That must has to be more than a decade ago. And I am more than happy.

I was probably always destined for this, if there is such a thing - I have an incredibly vivid memory of receiving my first box of 64-color Crayolas - I recall that I spent a good many hours of many days experimenting with all the colors in that box, arranging them and rearranging them into different palettes, and exploring different color combinations. It was one of the best gifts I ever received.