Blue Screen – Blue Mood? Influence of Background Color and Attractiveness of Female Stimulus Persons on Current Mood in an Online Experiment (PANAS)

In an online experiment, more than 6,000 volunteers rated women’s faces according to their attractiveness. The women were either extraordinarily attractive or of medium to low attractiveness. The background of the website was either Black, Blue, Green, Gray, Red or Yellow. Following the likeability assessments, the participants were asked to assess their own current mood using the PANAS (Positive and Negative Affect Schedule). The study was conducted in a German-language and an English-language version. A factor analysis shows perfect orthogonality for the Positive Affects and Negative Affects and a reliability analysis shows excellent reliability for both scales. In the case of Negative Affects, the scores show an extreme concentration at the lower end of the scale. The attractiveness of the stimulus persons has a significant but weak effect on Negative Affects. The background color of the website shows an effect on Positive Affects, but not on Negative Affects. The clear favorite is Green. The participants in the English-language version scored higher on Negative Affects. The older test subjects scored better on both scales than the younger ones.