Baker-Miller Pink, Can Color Change Your Life?
There are not many colors that have a name attached to them. Baker-Miller-Pink is one of the few (the only other one I can think of is International Klein Blue, but here will be more). This is the story about Baker-Miller-Pink, why jails were painted pink, and the effects of this color on people’s psyche.
The Birth of Disarming Pink
In 1979 Schauss wrote about a finding, and he reports on the possibility of color to reduce potential and actual aggression. (Schauss, 1979) The original recipe to produce Baker-Miller pink is mixing half a liter of silk gloss red with four liters of pure white latex. This color of pink had a calming effect and relaxed hostile or agitated behavior in ten to fifteen minutes. This sounds already impressive, but there is more. He conducted muscular resistant tests. If a subject had a pink construction paper about 15 inches in front of his eyes, he experienced a significant loss of muscular strength. If a blue construction paper was placed at a similar distance from the subject’s eyes, strength returned, and the subject showed no evidence of the earlier loss of muscular strength. (Schauss, 1979) A powerful action for such a soft color.
Real-Life Test
Schauss suggested that a pink holding cell might be helpful as a `timeout´ room for acting out inmates. Two commanding officers at the U.S. Naval Correctional Center in Seattle, Washington, decided to try the pink holding cell in early 1979. On March 1, 1979, Chief Warrant Officer Baker and facility commander Captain Miller ordered that a holding cell used for initial confinement of new inmates be painted entirely pink, except for the floor. The cell housed new inmates for less than fifteen minutes. Before painting the experimental holding cell pink, duty intake officers remarked to Baker that hostile behavior by new inmates was daily a `whale of a problem.´ (Schauss, 1979)
The results were impressive. There had been no incidents of aggressive behavior during the initial phase of confinement. New inmates only required a maximum of fifteen minutes of exposure to ensure that the potential for violent or aggressive behavior had been reduced. The effect continued for thirty minutes after release from the cell, which was enough time to process the new inmate to a permanent cell. Dr. Boccumini (Director of Clinical Services for the San Bernardino County Probation Department) stated that `the staff reports excellent results, with the youngsters’ aggressive behavior diminishing quite rapidly. In fact, it has worked so well that staff must limit delinquents´ exposure because the youngsters become too weak.´ Schauss concludes his publication with; The phenomenon affects the endocrine system causing a tranquilizing effect on the muscle system. The effect can not be controlled by conscious or unconscious effort. This has been proven by experimenting with accomplished athletes in the martial arts and yogas. It is similarly effective with the color-blind. In repeated experiments with adolescents and adults, the non-drug anesthetic effect occurs, on average, in 2.7 seconds. I would suggest the use of pink color in any situation where sudden or uncontrollable aggression is likely. (Schauss, 1979)
Too Good to Be True?
The research continued, and this produced new exciting material. The relative frequency of aggressive incidents did decrease for the first month following the color change but subsequently increased, reaching peak levels during the last half of the pink year. Overall, little or no difference was found in the incident rate for the pre- and post-pink months. (Pellegrini, Schauss, & Miller, 1981)
The empirical status of hypothesized kinesiological effects of color is still very much in doubt. (Pellegrini, Schauss, & Miller, 1981) In most cases, it was the institutional officials responsible for the decision to try out this highly unconventional idea who made the observations as to its efficacy. Under such circumstances, both the objective results and the subjective judgments by which they were evaluated could have been powerfully affected by administrative ego-involvement and a priori confidence in the test procedure. This can lead to a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Pellegrini, Schauss, & Miller, 1981
The descriptive statistical data showed a decline in incidents for the first month the test room was painted pink. After that, the rate increased steadily over the next three or four months, declined for about four months, then rose sharply, reaching peak levels during the last four months. No overall aggression-reduction attributable to pink was indicated. Even worse, if you look at the graph, you will see that at the end of the period, there were MORE incidents. In short, if there was a tranquilizing effect of pink on aggression, it was certainly not revealed here. (Pellegrini, Schauss, & Miller, 1981) The drop in incidents was probably due to a flurry of media coverage of the `pink room experiment,´ which coincided with the decrease through January, February, and March 1980. It is not unlikely that publicity re-aroused the kind of dispositional sets which produced the low incident rate in the first month of the pink test period. Arresting officers and jail staff could well have been sensitized, consciously or unconsciously, to their role in an `important experiment´ or the field test of a `new and proven scientific discovery´ by abundant and often wildly overstated press reports. (Pellegrini, Schauss, & Miller, 1981)
Conclusion
So it is probably not only about the color. Maybe the `shock value´ of the unusual color helps to subdue rage reactions in people who would otherwise have acted them out. Individual differences in suggestibility might also have affected responses to prior knowledge of why the room was painted pink. Insofar as the color is believed to exert its influence inexorably, as if by a magically hypnotic spell against which there is no defense, relative docility would be expected. (Pellegrini, Schauss, & Miller, 1981) Another factor is that a fresh coat of paint, perhaps any fresh coat of paint, even a `crazy´ color like hot pink, helps minimize violent behaviors in volatile criminal detention settings. The new paint may elicit in inmates and officers alike perceptions of the whole facility as one where administrators and staff really do care about the human ecology of the jail, and thus, the people who are detained and work in it. This could suggest that the decline in aggressive encounters following the paint change occurred despite the outlandish pink color, not because of it.
Colors have different, sometimes strong symbolic content depending on the era, culture, etc. It isn’t easy to discern whether the effect of the colors works by itself or whether it is a product of our cultural backgrounds and expectations. In general, the separation of effect (`blue makes you creative´) and symbolic content (`green stands for hope´) is often blurred. The number of such attributions is a multitude: blue means conscientiousness and loyalty, red danger and energy, yellow stands for knowledge and truth, green symbolizes honesty and security, etc. It is unclear to what extent specific effects can be inferred. In conclusion, if you want to feel peaceful at home, there is no need to start painting your rooms Baker-Miller pink.
Interesting link:
Your Idea About Science May Be Completely Wrong
References
Pellegrini, R., Schauss, A., & Miller, M. (1981). Room Color and Aggression in A Criminal Detention Holding Cell: A Test of the “Tranquilizing Pink” Hypothesis. Orthomolecular Psychiatry, 10(3), 174–181. Retrieved from http://orthomolecular.org/library/jom/1981/pdf/1981-v10n03-p174.pdf
Schauss, A. (1979). Tranquilizing Effect of Color Reduces Aggressive Behavior and Potential Violence. Orthomolecular Psychiatry, 8(4), 218–221. Retrieved from http://orthomolecular.org/library/jom/1979/pdf/1979-v08n04-p218.pdf
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