{"id":13805,"date":"2018-09-29T01:38:20","date_gmt":"2018-09-29T01:38:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=13805"},"modified":"2018-09-30T01:41:04","modified_gmt":"2018-09-30T01:41:04","slug":"can-pink-really-pacify","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/can-pink-really-pacify\/","title":{"rendered":"Can pink really pacify?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Julie Irish<\/a>, Iowa State University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

As an interior designer<\/a>, I\u2019ve long been interested in how different colors can affect our mood and behavior. <\/p>\n

For example, if you\u2019ve recently been to a fast food restaurant, you might notice that there\u2019s a lot of red \u2013 red chairs<\/a> and red signs<\/a>, red trays<\/a> and red cups<\/a>. <\/p>\n

When, on the other hand, was the last time you ate in a blue restaurant?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a reason for this<\/a>: Red, it turns out, has been shown to stimulate the appetite. Blue, on the other hand, has been shown to be an appetite suppressant. <\/p>\n

But when it comes to interior design, the color pink has been particularly controversial. <\/p>\n

After some psychologists were able to show that certain shades of pink reduced aggression, it was famously used in prison cells to limit aggression in inmates. Yet pink toes a shaky line. Is it a benign means of subtle manipulation? A tool to humiliate? An outgrowth of gender stereotyping? Or some combination of the three? <\/p>\n

Pink is for girls?<\/h2>\n

When most people read that some are using pink to reduce aggression, they probably think, \u201cof course.\u201d<\/p>\n

After all, from birth pink is appropriated to pretty little baby girls and blue is assigned to bouncing baby boys. In human psychology, we have come to connect the color to femininity and its corresponding gender stereotypes<\/a>: weakness, shyness and tranquility.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n Painter John Vanderbank\u2019s 1694 portrait of a boy.<\/span>
\n Christie’s<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But according to architectural historian Annmarie Adams, pink didn\u2019t always automatically signal femininity<\/a>. Pink became the default color for all things girly only after World War II. Before then, it was common for girls to wear blue, while mothers would often dress their boys in pink. <\/p>\n

Adams traces the switch back to Nazi Germany. Just as the Nazis forced Jewish people to wear a yellow badge to identify themselves, they forced gay men to wear a pink badge. Ever since then, pink has been thought of as a non-masculine color reserved for girls. <\/p>\n

Prisons go pink<\/h2>\n

Once pink started to embody femininity, some wondered if it could be used to \u201ctame\u201d aggressive male behavior.<\/p>\n

Beginning in the 1980s, a handful of prison wardens painted holding cells in prisons and jails pink. The hope was that the color would have a calming effect on the male prisoners.<\/p>\n

The wardens were inspired by the results from a series of studies conducted by research scientist Alexander Schauss. Schauss had concocted a pink paint color that he claimed could reduce the physical strength and aggressive tendencies of male inmates. <\/p>\n

In his study<\/a>, Schauss had subjects stare at a large square of pink paper with their arms outstretched. Then he tried to force their arms back down. He demonstrated he could easily do this as the color had weakened them. When he repeated the same experiment with a square of blue paper, their normal strength had returned. <\/p>\n

Schauss named the color \u201cBaker-Miller Pink\u201d after two of his co-experimenters, naval officers Gene Baker and Ron Miller. Baker and Miller were so impressed with Schauss\u2019 findings that they went ahead and painted the holding cells at their naval base this shade of pink. They raved about the results and how it had pacified inmates. <\/p>\n

As word got around about the benefits of pink d\u00e9cor, psychiatric units and other holding areas were painted Baker-Miller Pink. Custodians reported quieter inmates and less physical and verbal abuse<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The Swiss go for a \u2018cooler\u2019 pink<\/h2>\n

All this seems like a simple, cost-effective solution to calm inmates. <\/p>\n

However, a few years later, Schauss decided to repeat the experiments \u2013 only to find that Baker-Miller Pink didn\u2019t have a calming effect on inmates<\/a> after all.<\/p>\n

In fact, after conducting a test in an actual pink cell, he noticed no difference in inmates\u2019 behavior. He was even concerned that the color could make them more violent. It should be noted Baker-Miller Pink is not a pale, gentle, pastel pink. Instead, it\u2019s a bright, hot pink.<\/p>\n

Some 30 years later, psychologist Oliver Genschow and his colleagues repeated Schauss\u2019 experiments. They carried out a rigorous experiment to see if Baker-Miller Pink reduced aggressive behavior in prison inmates in a detention center cell. Like Schauss\u2019 later work, they found no evidence<\/a> that the color reduced aggressiveness. <\/p>\n

That might have been the end of the discussion on the benefit of pink cells. But in 2011, a Swiss psychologist named Daniela Sp\u00e4th wrote about her own experiments with a different shade of pink paint. <\/p>\n

She called her shade \u201cCool Down Pink<\/a>,\u201d and she applied it to cell walls<\/a> in 10 prisons across Switzerland. <\/p>\n

Over the course of her four-year study, prison guards reported less aggressive behavior in prisoners who were placed in the pink cells. Sp\u00e4th also found that the inmates seemed to be able to relax more quickly in the pink cells. Sp\u00e4th suggests that Cool Down Pink could have a variety of applications beyond prisons \u2013 in airport security areas, schools and psychiatric units.<\/p>\n

One British newspaper<\/a> reported that prison guards were happy with the effects of Cool Down Pink, but prisoners were less so. The newspaper interviewed a Swiss prison reformer who said it was degrading to be held in a room that looked like \u201ca little girl\u2019s bedroom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Benign manipulation or outright humiliation?<\/h2>\n

Herein lies the crux of the controversy. Opponents of the practice say<\/a> that the implication that the color \u2013 with its feminine associations \u2013 will somehow reduce aggression is, in and of itself, sexist and discriminatory. Gender studies scholar Dominique Grisard has argued<\/a> that the pink prison walls \u2013 regardless of whether they pacify \u2013 are ultimately designed to humiliate male prisoners.<\/p>\n

Famously, in the 1980s, the University of Iowa football team painted the visitors\u2019 locker room at Kinnick Stadium pink. A 2005 refurbishment added pink lockers and even pink urinals<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The reasoning behind using the pink shade, officially named \u201cDusty Rose<\/a>,\u201d was much the same as that of the prison wardens: The coach, Hayden Fry, believed it would curtail the aggression of the opposing players and allow the home team to gain a competitive edge. <\/p>\n

Yet like the prisons, this could be having the unintended, opposite effect. Some opposing players have reported<\/a> being more fired up by the perceived insult of the pink locker rooms.<\/p>\n

And so the debate about the power of pink rages on. <\/p>\n

That hasn\u2019t stopped some from trying to deploy pink to achieve tranquility in their homes. In 2017, model Kendall Jenner painted her living room Baker-Miller Pink \u2013 and raved about how it made her feel much calmer<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Who knows how many of her army of fans<\/a> have followed her advice. For my part \u2013 although I love pink \u2013 I shudder at the thought of a hot pink living room, no matter how powerful its calming effects.\"The<\/p>\n

Julie Irish<\/a>, Assistant Professor of Interior Design, Iowa State University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Julie Irish, Iowa State University As an interior designer, I\u2019ve long been interested in how different colors can affect our mood and behavior. For example, if you\u2019ve recently been to a fast food restaurant, you might notice that there\u2019s a lot of red \u2013 red chairs and red signs, red trays and red cups. When, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":13799,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293],"tags":[4037,4574,366,3550,5190,2480,228],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13805"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13805"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13806,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13805\/revisions\/13806"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}