White signals purity… When someone is seen to have a clear conscience you talk about them being whiter than white. The degree to which the colour white evokes a positive image in our brain was shown in a 2004 study by Gerald Clore from the University of Virginia. The 169 test subjects were shown words on a monitor that had a positive association, such as “soft”, and others with a negative association, such as “devil”. The concepts appeared in both black and white fonts. The challenge for the participants was to assign the correct meaning to the words as quickly as possible. The volunteers were best able to achieve this when words with positive associations appeared in white and those with negative ones in black – in other words, when the meaning of the word corresponded with the colour's image. 5 10 PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTS ABOUT COLOURS SHOPPING 32 Deutsche EuroShop AG Annual Report 2015