London - Feeling blue can make things seem a bit greyer than usual, a study has found.
According to psychologists, sadness can make it difficult for us to distinguish between different colours.
For the study, 127 men and women were asked to watch an emotional film or TV clip and then complete a visual judgment task. They were randomly assigned to watch either a sad clip – the scene from The Lion King in which Simba’s father falls from a cliff – or a funny clip from a comedy show.
Participants were then asked to identify patches of grey which were tinged with a colour. But the ones who watched the sad clip tended to struggle to identify colours on the spectrum between blue and yellow.
Scientists believe this is because when we are sad, we tend to suffer from a deficiency of the brain chemical dopamine – which can impair perception of certain colours.
Lead researcher Christopher Thorstenson, from the University of Rochester in New York, said: “Our results show that mood and emotion can affect how we see the world around us.”
The report, published in the journal Psychological Science, said: “People who are sad often report seeing the world as ‘grey’ and ‘colourless’. It is possible that these expressions are actually experiences of sadness and altered colour perception.”
Daily Mail