> Recent research has shown that the color red influences psychological functioning. Red is hypothesized to be linked to aggression and danger in evolution, and these links are enhanced by culture-specific uses of red. Thus, color meanings are thought to be grounded in biologically based proclivities and learned associations. However, to date, there has been no direct evidence for the influence of experience on the red effect. This study focused on whether experience could change the psychological effects of the color red. In the context of the Chinese stock market, contrary to the meaning generally associated with red as negative and green as positive, red represents a rise in stock price and green stands for a decrease. An experiment using a 2×2 between subjects factorial design demonstrated that red (compared with green) impaired Chinese college students’ performance on an IQ test (in accordance with the red effect), but the opposite effect was found among stockbrokers. These results provide direct evidence of learned color meanings, in support of the general model of color effect. ...
which suggests that red has a non-trivial learned color meaning on people, and leaving open the possibility that it's mostly, if not all, culturally based.
> in a series of 7 experiments we demonstrate that women perceive men to be more attractive and sexually desirable when seen on a red background and in red clothing, and we additionally show that status perceptions are responsible for this red effect.
They hypothesize that red is not a general signal of danger, but has many meanings. NOTE! http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23398185 points out that there's likely publication bias in this experiment, so there might be no signal. I bring up the study anyway to point out that many people have different interpretations for the "evolutionary emergence", and the evidence is low.
> Claims of universality pervade color preference research. It has been argued that there are universal preferences for some colors over others (e.g., Eysenck, 1941), universal sex differences (e.g., Hurlbert & Ling, 2007), and universal mechanisms or dimensions that govern these preferences (e.g., Palmer & Schloss, 2010). However, there have been surprisingly few cross-cultural investigations of color preference and none from nonindustrialized societies that are relatively free from the common influence of global consumer culture. Here, we compare the color preferences of British adults to those of Himba adults who belong to a nonindustrialized culture in rural Namibia. British and Himba color preferences are found to share few characteristics, and Himba color preferences display none of the so-called "universal" patterns or sex differences.
Since you say that there is a "fair amount of literature" on this topic, can you point it out? I've not been able to find anything rigorous which supports your statement. Certainly nothing which is stronger than that last citation.
Whilst it is true that colors are seen differently in various cultures, the universality of red as the color of stop signs makes it a sensible choice for a color that is intended to make someone consider the consequences of an action.
Not the OP, but there is a fair bit of literature which could be construed to support their point. Indeed, 2 out of the 3 references you cite could support their point.
1) Note that the general Chinese student performed worse when red was used - despite the generally positive Chinese cultural values put on red. The fact that training could overcome this does not invalidate that point. Indeed, the learnt value of red indicates that it may be sensible to use it in UI, simply because it is fairly standard.
2) Studies have shown that many women find dangerous men more attractive[1]. Perhaps this supports the idea that red represents danger?
3) Without access to the full study there is no way of determining exactly what this says.
The wikipedia link is strong support for the idea that stop signs are universally red. Every pictured sign, from Argentina to Zimbabwe, is at the very least framed in red, and most are considerably redder than that. The text notes "The white legend/red field appearance is usually the same [from country to country]".
The imgur link shows an unexplained green sign. Any thoughts as to why it's green?
Not clear why that instance is green. I think I've seen arrive photos of green stop signs too. The point of my post wasn't too be flippant though: the GP was talking about stop signs being universally red, and that being basis for red labels/buttons. It only takes one example to disprove universality, I showed multiple.
To point of labeling and actions though:
1) I'm proponent of button labels being verbs ("Delete" vs "Yes")
2) Undo-able where possible
Actually, the post you responded to specifically argued that the universality (= every country, not necessarily every sign) of red stop signs makes red a good color for warning dialogs. That argument doesn't require that all stop signs be red everywhere, it requires that red stop signs be typical everywhere, which they are. The only non-red stop signs described by wikipedia are several decades old.
As to the topic, I agree that the "yes" doesn't belong on the buttons, and have no particular opinion on undo vs no-undo.
A guess would be that there are strict rules and regulations about placement of official road signs even on private property. These signs are probably unofficial signs placed by property owners to regulate traffic on their property and thus legally have to look different from the signs placed by the local department of transport (or whoever is responsible)
Nevertheless even going back as far as 1931, the Geneva convention "CONVENTION CONCERNING THE UNIFICATION OF ROAD SIGNALS" says:
Signs Prohibiting Passage: For these signs, the colour red must clearly predominate and must be used so as to bring into relief the general contour of the sign. The other colours to be used are optional except in the following cases[1]
I still say stop signs are universally expected to be red. Some singular counter-examples don't disprove that - they just show there are some weird things that happen.
I'd also note that linked example was posted from Reddit (in a joke sub-reddit) and it is entirely possible it was photoshopped. Other examples of green stop signs found by Google seems to be almost all photoshopped or on private property.
The OP suggested that the universality of red in this fashion was evolutionary in basis. Stop signs as an example of universality. But stop signs are closely coupled to a specific, near-universal machine culture.
The presence of early non-red stop signs suggests that "red = stop" is a learned association. Indeed, as the Wikipedia article states, the early standardizations used a yellow background instead of red. I conjecture that it was originally yellow for visibility reason, then turned red for better contrast with yellow used for caution signs. A full analysis would need to dig into the reasoning for this decision.
A more complete analysis would need to look into how color was used in the 1800s, before driving culture appeared. For example, was red the predominate color of danger in steam engines? (Note also that in Swedish and Finnish cultures, Falu red/punamulta is associated with an idyllic country-side life. These houses are not considered "dangerous" despite being red.)
The first and third literature references I gave are not in opposition to the idea that red has a (near) universal meaning. They instead cast doubt on the conjecture that the associations are evolutionary. The first suggests that even the observed psychological effects might be culturally learned, and the third suggests that we have a rather wide-spread global culture, making it hard to determine what is cultural and what is evolutionary.
Stop signs are also nearly universally octagon in shape. I very much doubt there's any sort of evolutionary reason for this choice.
My challenge was for the OP to defend the statement that the choice of red = blood = danger = stop is based on evolutionary reasons, with scientific research to back it up. The paper I quoted show that there's very little research which can distinguish between a shared culture (and yes, China and the US have a shared culture) and evolutionary universalism.
One need only read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_c... to see that even the basic color terms across cultures, and the evolution of color terms, is still being debated. It would be hard to ask someone "is red a dangerous color" if that someone doesn't distinguish between red and yellow.
> Recent research has shown that the color red influences psychological functioning. Red is hypothesized to be linked to aggression and danger in evolution, and these links are enhanced by culture-specific uses of red. Thus, color meanings are thought to be grounded in biologically based proclivities and learned associations. However, to date, there has been no direct evidence for the influence of experience on the red effect. This study focused on whether experience could change the psychological effects of the color red. In the context of the Chinese stock market, contrary to the meaning generally associated with red as negative and green as positive, red represents a rise in stock price and green stands for a decrease. An experiment using a 2×2 between subjects factorial design demonstrated that red (compared with green) impaired Chinese college students’ performance on an IQ test (in accordance with the red effect), but the opposite effect was found among stockbrokers. These results provide direct evidence of learned color meanings, in support of the general model of color effect. ...
which suggests that red has a non-trivial learned color meaning on people, and leaving open the possibility that it's mostly, if not all, culturally based.
Or consider http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20677892 :
> in a series of 7 experiments we demonstrate that women perceive men to be more attractive and sexually desirable when seen on a red background and in red clothing, and we additionally show that status perceptions are responsible for this red effect.
They hypothesize that red is not a general signal of danger, but has many meanings. NOTE! http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23398185 points out that there's likely publication bias in this experiment, so there might be no signal. I bring up the study anyway to point out that many people have different interpretations for the "evolutionary emergence", and the evidence is low.
Or consider http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23148465 :
> Claims of universality pervade color preference research. It has been argued that there are universal preferences for some colors over others (e.g., Eysenck, 1941), universal sex differences (e.g., Hurlbert & Ling, 2007), and universal mechanisms or dimensions that govern these preferences (e.g., Palmer & Schloss, 2010). However, there have been surprisingly few cross-cultural investigations of color preference and none from nonindustrialized societies that are relatively free from the common influence of global consumer culture. Here, we compare the color preferences of British adults to those of Himba adults who belong to a nonindustrialized culture in rural Namibia. British and Himba color preferences are found to share few characteristics, and Himba color preferences display none of the so-called "universal" patterns or sex differences.
Since you say that there is a "fair amount of literature" on this topic, can you point it out? I've not been able to find anything rigorous which supports your statement. Certainly nothing which is stronger than that last citation.