Trisha Barton
Summer Research Project:
Can the Color Red Affect Test Anxiety?
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Research
During the summer of 2015, Trisha attended Louisiana State University (LSU) for the Pre-Doctoral Scholars Institute. While at LSU, she engaged in several activities such as an 18- hour intensive research methods class and lecture, and a workshop on Dr. Rafael Luna‘s book “The Art of Scientific Storytelling.” In addition to independently researching the effects of the color red and test anxiety, she created a presentation with her paper called, “The Effects of Red on Test Anxiety: Does the Color of a Proctor’s Shirt Affect Intellectual Performance” in a month. The paper is a proposal for a potential research study that Trisha plans to conduct later on in her career. Trisha has been researching the effects of color in educational and consumer settings since 2012. Trisha researched under Dr. Amy Copeland, a current professor and researcher in LSU’s Clinical Psychology Department.
Abstract:
The following proposal addresses the relationship between test anxiety and the effects of red on low and high anxious individuals. Also, the study investigates if a test proctor wearing a red shirt affects anxiety levels and intellectual performance. The research of this topic can be beneficial in gathering basic and applied knowledge on color effects in environmental contexts, specifically in educational settings such as standardized testing. The first independent variable is color, manipulated by the test proctor’s shirt color—white, in the first IQ assessment and then a red shirt during the second assessment. The second independent variable is anxious type, low or high, and this is being assessed by using the Spielberger Test Anxiety Inventory. The dependent variables are anxiety experienced during the test and intellectual performance assessed with a German numeric IQ test. This proposal includes two hypotheses: (1) It is hypothesized that there will be a significant main effect for anxiety, such that those participants whom are highly anxious will report higher levels of anxiety during the test; and (2) it is hypothesized that there will be a significant color by anxiety level interaction, whereby participants with high test anxiety exposed to the proctor wearing the red shirt will perform particularly poorly on the IQ test.
Keywords: Color, Red, Avoidance, Environmental Effects, Test anxiety, Worry