When next Wednesday’s meeting is a red-letter day: The effect of red on temporal reasoning

Abstract

Interpretation of the ambiguous statement “Next Wednesday’s meeting has been moved two days” depends on dichotomous metaphorical perspectives on time. The ego-moving perspective, which implies a future-bound movement, renders the meeting postponed to next Friday. Alternatively, the time-moving perspective, which implies a past-bound movement, translates the situation into an earlier occurrence to next Monday. Motor experiences in space and those grounded as such can influence the preferred perspectives on time. Emerging evidence suggests that sensory experiences can likewise exert an impact. Along these lines and focusing on visual perception, this research examined the unexplored effect of color on temporal reasoning. We found that exposure to the word “meeting” styled in red (versus black) font heightened arousal, which in turn reduced perceived temporal distance that maps onto the time-moving perspective, resulting in a Monday interpretation (Experiment 1). We further demonstrated that the strength of the association between red and the time-moving perspective was conditional on levels of arousal (Experiment 2). By documenting the novel contributor of color to the malleability of temporal perspective preferences and the underlying psychological mechanism thereof, our work adds to the literature on color and psychological functioning and underscores the significance of sensory perception in temporal cognition.