Nudging Altruism by Color: Blue or Red?

Xinyu Nie; Han Lin; Juan Tu; Jiahe Fan; Pingping Wu

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.03086

Nudging Altruism by Color: Blue or Red?

Front Psychol. 2020 Jan 22:10:3086. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.03086. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Xinyu Nie¹, Han Lin², Juan Tu³, Jiahe Fan³, Pingping Wu²

Affiliations

¹ Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.
² School of Information Engineering, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Auditing Information Engineering, Nanjing Audit University, Nanjing, China.
³ School of Physics, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China.

Abstract

Altruism can be spontaneously aroused by environmental factors. However, the mechanism behind these factors is subject to debate. We carried out a study of laboratory experiment using computer-based Mouselab method to determine the mechanism. We found that different colors altered the altruistic behaviors of people. Specifically, blue enhanced altruism, whereas red discouraged altruism. We used a process-tracing technique to monitor the selection of an adaptive strategy and demonstrate that different colors can simulate changes in information acquisition and then lead to the corresponding behaviors. The results suggested that the decision heuristic plays a mediating role in the link between colors and individual altruistic behaviors.

Keywords: altruism; behavior; color; decision heuristic; experiment.