Colour Me Morally: White and Black Products Influence Prosocial Behaviours

Television and movie characters who wear white clothes are the “good guys” and those who wear black ones are the “bad guys”. In the English language, “black-hearted” means wicked and evil, while the idiom “pure as driven snow” refers to moral cleanliness. People often associate white colours with moral concepts such as purity and goodness, and black colours with immoral concepts such as con tamination and evilness. These psychological associations between white, black, and morality are likely engrained into human existence. People more readily identify positive words in a white font than negative words in a black font (Meier, Robinson, and Clore 2004; Sherman and Clore 2009), and they perceive gray colours as lighter when evaluating positive words but as darker when evaluating negative ones (Meier et al. 2007). Drawing upon findings from priming research, we posit that exposure to white products increases propensity for prosocial behaviours while exposure to black products increases propensity for non-prosocial behaviours. For instance, people exposed to elderly concepts walk slower (Bargh et al., 1996) and people primed with professor stereotypes score higher on academic tests (Hansen and Wänke 2009). These priming effects occur because environmental cues activate related concepts in the self that then guide behaviour (Wheeler et al., 2007).