title: Back to the USSR: How Colors Might Shape the Political Perception of East versus West.
abstract: People typically process information to confirm their prior held attitudes and stereotypes. As the political relations between NATO and Russia have distinctively drifted apart in recent years, we were interested in how far old-established color depictions referring to the Cold War's demarcations (USSR = red; NATO = blue) might reinforce people's political perception of an East versus West antagonism nowadays. Participants received a fabricated news article in which both world powers were either depicted on a map as Russia = red and NATO = blue or vice versa (Study 1). Testing a different sample in Study 2, we fully removed color assignments and used hachured distinctions or no distinctions at all. We revealed that perceived political distance between both sides increased particularly for participants with negative attitudes toward Russia, but only when Russia was depicted in red. Thus, colors referring to the old-established Cold War patterns can indeed shape the political perception and reinforce stereotypical East versus West thinking.
authors.affiliation: Department of General Psychology and Methodology, University of Bamberg, Bamberg, Germany; Research group EPÆG (Ergonomics, Psychological Æsthetics, Gestalt), Bamberg, Germany; Bamberg Graduate School of Affective and Cognitive Sciences (BaGrACS), Bamberg, Germany.
authors.forename: Fabian
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Gebauer
authors.affiliation: Department of General Psychology and Methodology, University of Bamberg, Bamberg, Germany; Research group EPÆG (Ergonomics, Psychological Æsthetics, Gestalt), Bamberg, Germany; Bamberg Graduate School of Affective and Cognitive Sciences (BaGrACS), Bamberg, Germany.
authors.forename: Marius H
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Raab
authors.affiliation: Department of General Psychology and Methodology, University of Bamberg, Bamberg, Germany; Research group EPÆG (Ergonomics, Psychological Æsthetics, Gestalt), Bamberg, Germany; Bamberg Graduate School of Affective and Cognitive Sciences (BaGrACS), Bamberg, Germany.
authors.forename: Claus-Christian
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Carbon
keywords: Ukraine Crisis; colors; information processing; political perception; stereotypes