Green for hope and red for fear? Testing the color effect on the implicit achievement motive

Abstract

Specific colors unconsciously influence achievement-related behavior, but colors also affect the expression of specific hormones (like cortisol). As implicit motives are related to both behavior and hormones, the demonstration of implicit motives arousal by colors could build a bridge between these two phenomena. The goal of this study is to test how colors affect the two components of the implicit achievement motive hope of success (HS) and fear of failure (FF). Therefore, 61 healthy participants (44 female, Mage = 22.79, SDage = 3.95) were tested with the TAT/PSE (Heckhausen, 1963) and randomly assigned to three experimental arousal situations (color red, green, blue) and one control group. Contrary to the expectations, there was no influence of green on HS and red on FF, but green and blue could reduce the implicit FF. The results indicate that colors could potentially interact with the implicit achievement motive and therefore should be taken into account for motive testing.