Light Up Your Mood!

Knez, I. (1995). Effects of indoor lighting on mood and cognition. Journal Of Environmental Psychology,15(1), 39-51. doi:10.1016/0272-4944(95)90013-6

Igor Knez, professor of cognitive, emotion and environmental psychology at the University of Gavle in Sweden explores the possible connections between warm/cool lighting and the effects of mood and cognition. The study was conducted over two experiments: 1) light that induced the least negative mood which enhanced performance in recall, recognition and problem solving, and 2) light used for the preservation of positive mood resulted with enhanced performance in recall tasks and problem solving. The first experiment examined three independent variables: illuminance levels, colour temperatures, and then by participant gender. The hypothesis was: the luminous milieu (social environment) may act as a mood inducer, and that cognitive process will be affected by said moods. The findings verified that with the colour temperature of light, a positive mood yielded no significant results while for females negative mood decreased in warm and increased in cool lighting versus males whose negative moods increased in warm and decreased with cool. In the second experiment, the object was to investigate the cognition affected by mood in luminous environments. Experiment was housed within the same environmental setting, apparatus, design, independent, dependent variables and procedures as experiment one. The results on positive mood were opposite between genders: cool white light at low illuminance versus warm white light at high illuminance which preserved a positive mood. This articles provides a small but concise research on the correlations of colour temperature, illuminance and mood. Given the moderate use of statistical data, this article is suited well for audience with some basic understandings of collected data.