Research in consumer behavior suggests that negative emotions such as irritation, frustration etc. lead people to overestimate the passage of time. Another stream of psycho-physiological research postulates a link between colour perception and its effects on emotions and feelings. This thesis attempts to integrate these two lines of research and empirically demonstrate a feelings-mediated link between colour and time perception in a computer-mediated environment. We draw from both streams of research to suggest that overestimation of time is particularly likely to occur when the colour that an individual is exposed to is found to be irritating....[ Read more ]

Research in consumer behavior suggests that negative emotions such as irritation, frustration etc. lead people to overestimate the passage of time. Another stream of psycho-physiological research postulates a link between colour perception and its effects on emotions and feelings. This thesis attempts to integrate these two lines of research and empirically demonstrate a feelings-mediated link between colour and time perception in a computer-mediated environment. We draw from both streams of research to suggest that overestimation of time is particularly likely to occur when the colour that an individual is exposed to is found to be irritating.

Two attributes of colour - hue and chroma (saturation) - were manipulated in a web based experiment to test if the colour that the subjects were exposed to had an effect on their estimations of time. Each subject saw a colour on a "Downloading... " screen at the beginning of the study, and was asked immediately afterward to judge the amount of time that the screen was on her monitor. Consistent with predictions, the durations estimates as well as the feelings elicited by the exposure colour varied significantly across different conditions. Additionally, we found evidence for an intensification of the colour -->time perception link over time when the same exposure was repeated on each subject.

The implications for research on colour, time judgements and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) are discussed. Finally, the thesis also outlines the implications for Internet practitioners.

Keywords: Colour, Time Perception, Computer Mediated Environments, Internet, MANOVA, Repeated Measures ANOVA, Protensity, Temporal Perception