Christine Mohr

University of Lausanne | UNIL ·  Institut de psychologie (IP)

As people age, they tend to spend more time indoors, and the colours in their surroundings may significantly impact their mood and overall well‐being. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence to provide informed guidance on colour choices, irrespective of age group. To work towards informed choices, we investigated whether the associations be...

Studies on the color category PURPLE yielded inconsistent category boundaries, focal colors, and color-emotion associations. In French, there are at least three color terms referring to the shades of purple, potentially weighing on these inconsistencies. Thus, we tested the semantic breadth and richness in semantic meaning of violet (basic term), l...

It is a popular belief that colours impact one's psychological and affective functioning. However, clear-cut scientific evidence is still lacking, largely due to methodological challenges. Virtual reality (VR) enabled us to control and modify the environment. We exposed 60 participants to red or blue environments varying in lightness and saturation...

Previous literature on lie detection abilities bears an interesting paradox. On the group level, people detect others' lies at guessing level. However, when asked to evaluate their own abilities, people report being able to detect lies (i.e., self-reported lie detection). Understanding this paradox is important because decisions which rely on credi...

Would you pick another color than red for love when in a bad mood? We investigated whether current mood states might overrun abstract color-emotion relationships. We found comparable color choices for four emotion concepts, irrespective of the participants' induced mood (joy or fear). The current affective state seems to have little impact on how...

COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns have had major negative effects on individuals’ mental health and psychological well-being. Isolated at home, people may engage in recreational activities such as binge-watching (i.e., viewing multiple episodes of a TV series in 1 session) as a strategy to regulate emotional states. This is the first longitudinal study a...

Emerging evidence suggests that the development and persistence of violent behaviors may be associated with specific physiological reactivities. However, the results are contradictory, as both biological over-activation and under-activation may be involved. For the present contribution, we will focus on two studies examining the dynamics of the two...

Colour-emotion association data show a universal consistency in colour-emotion associations , apart from emotion associations with PURPLE. Possibly, its heterogeneity was due to different cognates used as basic colour terms between languages. We analysed emotion associations with PURPLE across 30 populations, 28 countries, and 16 languages (4,008 p...

Digital technologies reshape the way we interact with our environment, including with artworks. Advanced computational imaging solutions allow having extremely high-resolution digital reproductions of artworks outside museums, presumably increasing artwork engagement. We tested whether exploring such reproductions via an interactive interface heigh...

Researchers often study recognition of single emotions. Realistic faces, however, display several emotions in quick sequence or at the same time (mixed emotions). This likely causes interindividual differences in peoples’ reactions to the same situations and stimuli. We studied such differences using 11 self-portraits painted by Armand Henrion (187...

We analysed consistency of colour parameters after having matched colours to affective vocal bursts. Results were confirmed for lightness and chroma, but not hue, when testing associations with emotion terms and colour patches.

Many acknowledge that humans are a threat to nature and biodiversity. It is surprising then that conservation efforts only timidly consider psychological factors. We took a conservation psychology approach to understand which psychological variables might predict a lower willingness to engage in owl protection. Owls are a perfect test case since th...

After controlling for lightness and chroma statistically or colorimetrically, Schloss et al. (2020, JOSA A) showed that yellow hues were not judged to be happier than blue hues. They concluded that high lightness and high chroma rather than yellow hue drive yellow-happy associations. We agree with their main conclusions but wish to expand on two un...

Misinformation can have a detrimental impact on our beliefs, and it is therefore necessary to understand the cognitive mechanism by which false information is integrated or can be changed. In two experiments, we worked with fake psychic demonstrations, because observers easily adopt the experience as reflecting a « true » psychic event. We manipula...

When asked to represent their current mood through colors, participants are relatively consistent in their color choices. Joyful mood was best represented by chromatic and light colors, often of yellow hues, while fearful mood was represented by chromatic reds or darker achromatic colors, like black. We investigated whether the activation of such c...

The treatment of major psychiatric disorders is an arduous and thorny path for the patients concerned, characterized by polypharmacy, massive adverse side effects, modest prospects of success, and constantly declining response rates. The more important is the early detection of psychiatric disorders prior to the development of clinically relevant s...

The claim that favourite colours reveal individuals' personalities is popular in the media yet lacks scientific support. We assessed this claim in two stages. First, we catalogued claims from six popular websites, and matched them to key Big Six/HEXACO trait terms, ultimately identifying 11 specific, systematic, testable predictions (e.g., higher E...

The colour category PURPLE is strangely heterogeneous, potentially due to the use of different cognates. We asked French speakers from Algeria, France, and Switzerland (n = 274) to produce up to three free associations with violet (basic term), pourpre, and lilas (non-basic terms). We counted 2,075 associations. We developed a coding scheme that i)...

In Western societies, the stereotype prevails that pink is for girls and blue is for boys . A third possible gendered colour is red . While liked by women, it represents power, stereotypically a masculine characteristic. Empirical studies confirmed such gendered connotations when testing colour-emotion associations or colour preferences in males an...

Colours and emotions are associated in languages and traditions. Some of us may convey sadness by saying feeling blue or by wearing black clothes at funerals. The first example is a conceptual experience of colour and the second example is an immediate perceptual experience of colour. To investigate whether one or the other type of experience more...

The book presents the abstracts of the International Scientific Conference of the Color Society Russia dedicated to the discussion of a wide range of issues related to colour theory and its practical use in various socio-cultural contexts. The relevant psychological, sociological, linguistic, philosophical, pedagogical, art historical, technical an...

Purpose: Since lack of empathy is an important indicator of violent behaviors, researchers need consistent and valid measures. This study evaluated the practical significance of a potential physiological correlate of empathy compared to a traditional self-report questionnaire in 18 male violent offenders and 21 general population controls. Methods:...

Divergent thinking, the ability to generate multiple ideas from different perspectives, is considered a central component of the creative thinking process. While context, personality traits, and cognitive control abilities have individually been shown to have large effects on divergent thinking, their interrelationship is yet to be elucidated. In 8...

Paranormal beliefs (PBs) are common in adults. There are numerous psychological correlates of PBs and associated theories, yet, we do not know whether such correlates reinforce or result from PBs. To understand causality, we developed an experimental design in which participants experience supposedly paranormal events. Thus, we can test an event's...

Many of us “see red,” “feel blue,” or “turn green with envy.” Are such color-emotion associations fundamental to our shared cognitive architecture, or are they cultural creations learned through our languages and traditions? To answer these questions, we tested emotional associations of colors in 4,598 participants from 30 nations speaking 22 nativ...

This chapter provides an overview of how we define and work with colour, what we understand under the terms ‘emotion’ and ‘affect’, and how we approach the study of colour-affect relationships in contemporary societies. Throughout this process, we endeavour to remain attentive to situations that scholars working with ancient texts are likely to enc...

By means of an experimental dataset, we use deep learning to implement an RGB (red, green, and blue) extrapolation of emotions associated to color, and do a mathematical study of the results obtained through this neural network. In particular, we see that males (type-m individuals) typically associate a given emotion with darker colors, while femal...

By means of an experimental dataset, we use deep learning to implement an RGB extrapolation of emotions associated to color, and do a mathematical study of the results obtained through this neural network. In particular, we see that males typically associate a given emotion with darker colors while females with brighter colors. A similar trend was...

Electroencephalogram microstates are recurrent scalp potential configurations that remain stable for around 90 ms. The dynamics of two of the four canonical classes of microstates, commonly labeled as C and D, have been suggested as a potential endophenotype for schizophrenia. For endophenotypes, unaffected relatives of patients must show abnormali...

In 2015, a picture of a Dress (henceforth the Dress) triggered popular and scientific interest; some reported seeing the Dress in white and gold (W&G) and others in blue and black (B&B). We aimed to describe the phenomenon and investigate the role of contextualization. Few days after the Dress had appeared on the Internet, we projected it to 240 st...

Color therapy, healing through color, supposedly works through the physical exposure to color. In two studies, we assessed stress and anxiety reduction after color exposure using a commercially available relaxation‐through‐color routine. Participants either completed the routine by looking at the accompanying color disks or at a white patch. In stu...

As social beings, humans try to control and predict each other’s thoughts and behaviours. Stage magicians are particularly experienced at controlling observers’ perception and reality. Indeed, magicians frequently pretend to read your mind or predict your thoughts and behaviour. To understand if, and how observers accept such deceptive information,...

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) produce fewer deictic gestures, accompanied by delays/deviations in speech development, compared to typically-developing (TD) children. We ask whether children with ASD—like TD children—show right-hand preference in gesturing and whether right-handed gestures predict their vocabulary size in speech. Our...

Chronic stress, a characteristic of modern time, has a significant impact on general health. In the context of psychiatric disorders, insufficient coping behavior under chronic stress has been linked to higher rates of (1) depressive symptoms among subjects of the general population, (2) relapse among patients under treatment for clinical depressio...

For many, colours convey affective meaning. Popular opinion assumes that perception of colour is crucial to influence emotions. However, scientific studies test colour-emotion relationships by presenting colours as patches or terms. When using patches, researchers put great effort into colour presentation. When using terms, researchers have much le...

Studying the link between colour and emotion, or colour and affect more widely, attracts interest and criticism from two major study domains that naturally speak little to each other, namely vision science and linguistics. In both domains, researchers represent their respective study domain frequently expressing strong opinions about the importance...

Across cultures, people associate colours with emotions. Here, we test the hypothesis that one driver of this cross-modal correspondence is the physical environment we live in. We focus on a prime example – the association of yellow with joy, – which conceivably arises because yellow is reminiscent of life-sustaining sunshine and pleasant weather....

The link between colour and emotion and its possible similarity across cultures are questions that have not been fully resolved. Online, 711 participants from China, Germany, Greece and the UK associated 12 colour terms with 20 discrete emotion terms in their native languages. We propose a machine learning approach to quantify (a) the consistency a...

In previous studies, we observed that when experiencing a supposedly paranormal event, many observers were willing to endorse that this was a demonstration of a genuine paranormal phenomena. Also, observers seemed confused and emotionally involved (Lesaffre et al., 2018). Yet, these latter observations were anecdotal. In two studies, we set out to...

While symbolic meanings of colour might be the making of cultural customs (e.g., white vs. red worn at weddings in Western world vs. China/Japan), little is known whether emotion associations with colour are also culture-specific, or rather universal. We performed a comprehensive, systematic survey on conceptual colour-affect associations in 30 cou...

Colours carry social connotations like pink for girls and blue for boys. In a cross-sectional study, we investigated whether such early gender coding might be reflected in absolute colour preferences in children and adults of both genders. In two studies, participants selected their favourite (and least favourite, Study 2) colour from an unrestrict...

Popular opinion holds that color has specific affective meaning. Brighter, more chromatic, and warm colors were conceptually linked to positive stimuli and darker, less chromatic, and cool colors to negative stimuli. Whether such systematic color associations exist with actually felt mood remains to be tested. We experimentally induced four moods—j...

Beliefs in supernatural entities are integral parts of both our culturally embedded religions and more individualized magical belief systems (e.g., paranormal beliefs, spirituality). Scholars regularly link the occurrence of beliefs to individuals’ cognitive and affective ways of information processing. For magical beliefs in particular, we expect...

The subject of the research is the analysis of associative relations between twenty emotional concepts (interest, amusement, pride, joy, pleasure, satisfaction, admiration, love, relief, compassion, sadness, guilt, sorrow, shame, disappointment, fear, disdain, disgust, hatred and anger) and twelve basic names of colurs in the Russian language (red,...

The visual half-field technique has been shown to be a reliable and valid neuropsychological measurement of language lateralisation, typically showing higher accuracy and faster correct responses for linguistic stimuli presented in the right visual field (RVF) than left visual field (LVF). The RVF advantage corresponds to the well-known dominance o...

Magicians use deception to create effects that allow us to experience the impossible. More recently, magicians have started to contextualize these tricks in psychological demonstrations. We investigated whether witnessing a magic demonstration alters people's beliefs in these pseudo-psychological principles. In the classroom, a magician claimed to...

Popular opinions link colours and emotions. Yet, affective connotations of colours are heterogeneous (for example, red represents anger and love) partly because they relate to different contexts. Despite insufficient evidence, colours are used in applied settings (health, marketing, and others) for their supposed effects on cognitive and affective...

Questionnaire English. Belief in Psychological Principles Questions translated. (DOCX)

Framing instructions. Framing instructions used for the two groups. (DOCX)

Text. Questionnaire original. Belief in Psychological Principles Questions original. (DOCX)

Paranormal beliefs (PBs), such as the belief in the soul, or in extrasensory perception, are common in the general population. While there is information regarding what these beliefs correlate with (e.g., cognitive biases, personality styles), there is little information regarding the causal direction between these beliefs and their correlates. To...

Difficulties in social functioning have been linked to schizotypy, which may reflect vulnerability to psychotic disorders. We investigated these links in early adolescence, a developmental stage when many mental illnesses first emerge. Using the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire and The Community Assessment of Psychic Experiences, we examined...

Cognitive style is thought to be a stable marker of one’s way to approach mental operations. While of wide interest over the last decades, its operationalization remains a challenge. The literature indicates that cognitive styles assessed via i) questionnaires are predicted by personality and ii) performance tests (e.g., Group Embedded Figures Test...

Descriptive statistics, study 1, sample 1. Means and SD for the demographic and questionnaire data for men (n = 92) and women (n = 150) separately (full sample). Results from sex comparisons (t-tests) and Cronbach’s alpha [67] and Omega total [50] are equally presented. Significant results are given in bold. Last columns present sample comparisons...

Descriptive statistics, study 1, sample 2. Means and SD for the demographic and questionnaire data for men (n = 65) and women (n = 271) separately (full sample). Results of the sex comparison (t-tests) and Cronbach’s alphas and omegas are equally presented. Significant results are given in bold. Norms columns present p-values of the t-test comparin...

Descriptive statistics, study 2. Means and SD for the demographic and questionnaire data for men (n = 42) and women (n = 77) separately Results from the t-tests, Cronbach’s alphas and omegas are equally presented. Significant results are given in bold. Last columns present sample comparison with a French student population [39]. (XLSX)

Yoga practice, even in the short term, is supposed to enhance wellbeing and counteract psychopathology through modification of emotion reactivity. Yoga teaches that emotional responses may be less pronounced with longer and more frequent practice, and potentially when people perform yoga for mental rather than physical reasons. We tested 36 yoga pr...

Beliefs are persistent cognitive processes that guide human thought and behaviour. We can be aware of these beliefs, but not necessarily. These beliefs determine how we perceive and integrate upcoming information, in particular when they are conforming with our pre-existing ideas and prior expectations. Of these, paranormal beliefs are particularly...

Magical beliefs and experiences are common in the general population. Developmental studies show that magical beliefs are integral part of children's development. Once children reach the next level of their cognitive development, they are considered to abandon magical thinking in favor of rational, more scientific reasoning. According to these deve...

The latent structure of schizotypy and psychosis-spectrum symptoms remains poorly understood. Furthermore, molecular genetic substrates are poorly defined, largely due to the substantial resources required to collect rich phenotypic data across diverse populations. Sample sizes of phenotypic studies are often insufficient for advanced structural eq...

Despite well-established sex differences for cognition, audition, and somatosensation, few studies have investigated whether there are also sex differences in visual perception. We report the results of fifteen perceptual measures (such as visual acuity, visual backward masking, contrast detection threshold or motion detection) for a cohort of over...

When testing risk for psychosis, we regularly rely on self-report questionnaires. Yet, the more that people know about this condition, the more they might respond defensively, in particular with regard to the more salient positive symptom dimension. In two studies, we investigated whether framing provided by questionnaire instructions might modulat...

Flow, as well as other altered states of consciousness (ASCs), is traditionally described as being of different depths. Contemporary theories give such different depths little theoretical consideration. For instance, the prominent transient hypofrontality theory (THT, Dietrich, 2003) assumes that ASCs emerge because the capacities of the explicit,...

When traversing through an aperture, such as a doorway, people characteristically deviate towards the right. This rightward deviation can be explained by a rightward attentional bias which leads to rightward bisections in far space. It is also possible, however, that left or right driving practices affect the deviation. To explore this possibility,...

Full data file of all participants. (SAV)

The ability to mentalize has been marked as an important cognitive mechanism enabling belief in supernatural agents. In five studies we cross-culturally investigated the relationship between mentalizing and belief in supernatural agents with large sample sizes (over 67,000 participants in total) and different operationalizations of mentalizing. The...