Since ancient times, color has been credited with almost magical power over mood. “19th-century color healers, who claimed to cure everything from constipation to meningitis with glass filters”(Gruson 1982) . Although this outmoded form of medicine has since been discredited and replaced by modern remedies, the idea of color affecting physiology is relevant today. Daily life entails unavoidable exposure to a plethora of colors such as white hospital rooms, red fast food restaurants and blue spas. This paper will discover the psychology of color and light.
Now that people like Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s nutritionist Richard J. Wurtman have observed that, “It seems clear that …show more content…
Weseley defines the placebo method in the context of testing prescription drugs. The placebo method is exemplified when “ participants in the experimental group are supposed to ingest a drug, participants in the control group are given an inert but otherwise identical substance” (Weseley, p. 62). By conducting this single blind study, the researchers are able to sift out the psychological effects from physiological, or actual bodily effects. Environmental psychologist , Richard Wener voiced this criticism in Gruson’s article, stating that, “People love to see a magic bullet...It strikes me as very unlikely that we 'll find such a simple solution to very complex problems. In the real world, we usually find that the magical is fantastical. (Gruson) ' ' This justifiable skepticism is grounded in the minimal presence of direct experimental evidence, as most viable evidence that comes from these studies results in primarily correlational evidence. Correlation, as stated by the Barron textbook, “expresses a relationship between two variables without ascribing a cause” (Weseley, p.62). A simple relationship between two variables is not enough to convince many