As noted in the Introduction, prior research on color and
strength output has yielded disappointing results, even when examining
the colors used in our research. We think the most
important reason for this is that prior research failed to control for
the lightness and chroma properties of color. Lightness alone
(Frank & Gilovich, 1988) and chroma alone (Mekellides, 1990)
have been shown to influence behavior, thus comparing hues that
unsystematically vary on lightness and chroma is destined for
difficulty. Our research shows, for the first time, that when hue is
varied alone it can influence strength output in a theoretically
meaningful and empirically replicable manner. We suspect that the
influence of color on biological and psychological functioning is
actually quite pervasive, and anticipate that future empirical work
in this area will bear much fruit, as long as it carefully attends to
the critical issue of lightness and chroma confounds.