@ medickinson
Also known as Nanogirl, is an Auckland University nanotechnologist who is passionate about getting Kiwis hooked on science. Tweet her your science questions with Herald science writer Jamie Morton @ jamienzherald
As anyone who has driven a car or crossed a busy street knows, colours play a significant role in influencing people’s interactions with the world around them.
And the colour red, in particular, elicits the highest level of compliance for conformity with social norms.
But according to new research co- written by a US expert in product development and marketing, under certain conditions, the colour red can arouse “noncompliant behaviour” — basically, a rebellious streak — for a certain sensation- seeking segment of the population.
The widespread use of the colour red to signal danger, warn people or stop unwanted behaviour can actually be counter- productive for high sensation- seekers, according to the paper, to be published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.
Across three experiments that tested their hypotheses, University of Illinois researchers from found the colour positively affects one’s attitude towards noncompliance.
“The colour red is almost always used to stop people from doing something — to signal dangers, or to prevent someone from making a mistake or to induce compliant behaviour,” said study leader Professor Ravi Mehta.
“But if you’re someone who is high on the sensation- seeking scale — basically, someone who seeks thrills — the colour red elicits arousal.” What does the 1960s Beatles hit Girl have in common with Astor Piazolla’s tango composition Libertango? Probably not much, to the casual listener — but in the mind of one famously eclectic singersongwriter, the two songs are highly similar. That’s one of the surprising findings of an unusual Canadian neuroscience study based on brain scans of the musician, Sting ( pictured). The paper, published in the journal Neurocase, uses recently developed imaginganalysis techniques to provide a window into the mind of a masterful musician, in a pre- concert experiment. It also represents an approach that could offer i nsights i nto how gifted i ndividuals find connections between seemingly disparate thoughts or sounds, in fields ranging from arts to politics or science. Scanning techniques, known as multivoxel pattern analysis and representational dissimilarity analysis, showed which songs Sting found similar to one another and which ones dissimilar — based not on tests or questionnaires, but on activations of brain regions. “These state- of the- art techniques really allowed us to make maps of how Sting’s brain organises music,” said the study’s lead author, Daniel Levitin, a cognitive psychologist at McGill University. “That’s important because at the heart of great musicianship is the ability to manipulate, in one’s mind, rich representations of the desired soundscape.” If you want to predict which political party someone will support, take note of the person’s height.
The taller a person is, the more likely he or she is to support conservative political positions, support a conservative party and actually vote for conservative politicians, according to a new study using data from Britain.
“If you take two people with nearly identical characteristics — except one is taller than the other — on average the taller person will be more politically conservative,” said study coauthor assistant professor Sara Watson, of Ohio State University.
Using a detailed 2006 survey of nearly 10,000 Britons, the researchers found that a 2.5cm increase in height increased support for the Conservative Party by 0.6 per cent and the likelihood of voting for the party by 0.5 per cent.
Yet the results aren’t as strange as they might appear, Watson said.
Many studies have found that taller people generally earn more than shorter people and researchers have thought income could be linked to voting.