New Publication: What color are emergency exit signs? Egress behavior differs from verbal report

Our new article on people’s interpretations of exit sign colors in simulated emergencies was recently published in Applied Ergonomics.

We found that people were most likely to walk toward green signs in virtual environments during simulated emergencies. Yet, immediately after, they reported that exit signs in the building were red and that exit signs should be red. This surprising dissociation between walking behavior and verbal report emphasizes the importance of studying behavior in realistic environments.

 

Kinateder, M. Warren, W. H., & Schloss, K. B. (2019). What color are emergency exit signs? Egress behavior differs from verbal report. Applied Ergonomics, 75, 155-160.

New Publication: Mapping color to meaning in colormap data visualizations

Our paper on how on how people interpret colormap data visualizations was recently published in IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG) and presented at InfoVis 2018.

We found that people are better at interpreting colormaps when darker colors map to larger quantities (dark-is-more bias), regardless of the background color, when colormaps do not appear to vary in opacity. Yet, when colormaps do appear to vary in opacity there is evidence for an opaque-is-more bias. These two biases work together on light backgrounds but conflict on dark backgrounds.

 

Schloss, K. B., Gramazio, C. C., Silverman, A. T., Parker, M., L., & Wang, A. S. (2019). Mapping color to meaning in colormap data visualizations. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 25, 1, 1-10.

New Publication: Color, Music, and Emotion: Bach to the Blues

 

Our new article on color-music associations for a wide variety of genres was recently published in i-Perception. 

Color-music associations can be predicted from lower-level perceptual dimensions and higher-level emotional dimensions, but evidence indicates that the lower-level correspondences are mediated by shared emotional content between the colors and the music.

 

Whiteford, K. L., Schloss, K. B., Helwig, N. E., & Palmer, S. E. (2018). Color, Music, and Emotion: Bach to the Blues. i-Perception, 9(6), 1-27.