The color of success: a new study says red can make your work more accurate, while blue can make you more creative. But don't start repainting just yet.

• Author: Belluck, Pam
• Position: SCIENCE

Trying to ace your chemistry exam and figure out calculus, or are you writing a poem for English and dreaming up a project for art class? Either way, you might want to think about the color of your watts or even your computer screen.

According to a new study at the University of British Columbia, red can make people's work more accurate, and blue can make people more creative.

Researchers at UBC conducted tests with 600 people to determine whether performance varied when people saw red or blue. The participants performed tasks with words or images displayed against red, blue, or neutral, backgrounds on computer screens.

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The results: Red groups did better on tests of recall, and attention to detail, like remembering words or checking spelling and punctuation. Blue groups did better on tests requiring imagination, like inventing creative uses for a brick or creating toys from shapes.

"If you're talking about wanting enhanced memory for something like proofreading skirts, then a red color should be used," says Juliet Zhu, an assistant professor of marketing at UBC, who conducted the study.

But for "a brainstorming session for a new product," Zhu says, "then you should get people into a blue room."

The question of whether color can affect performance or emotions has tong fascinated scientists, not to mention advertisers, sports teams, and retailers.

A study at Durham University in England of Olympic uniforms in the 2004 Games found that athletes who wore red in boxing, tae kwon do, and wrestling defeated evenly matched opponents wearing blue 60 percent of the time. The researchers...