The study, "Monochrome Forests and Colorful Trees: The Effect of Black-and-white vs. Color Imagery on Construal Level," was published in the Journal of Consumer Research.
In one phase of the study, "participants who saw color images of a radio were actually willing to pay more for it even though it didn't get the only station they would need at the remote campsite" they were asked to imagine, explained co-author Kentaro Fujita, OSU associate professor of psychology. "When they saw black/white images, though, they chose a less-expensive radio they could use. Color distracted them from essential features and attracted them to superfluous ones.