Make a list, check off list items, lather, rinse, repeat
Thesis Process
People believe that they are in control of the choices that they make. The reality is that the world around us can manipulate our thoughts and actions without our awareness. Specific aspects of our various environments can affect our personality and behavior because our brains are constantly processing information subconsciously and automatically. These forces in our everyday lives are an invisible hand constantly guiding us and our habits, despite the choices we assume we are making independent of influence.
Can the color of a person’s childhood bedroom affect how aggressive they are as an adult? Would you have gotten that promotion if your name was easier to pronounce? Are you safer walking home at night in blue light over yellow light?
Research has shown that by choosing the right name for a natural disaster, we could attract between $500 and $700 million more in aid over a 10-year period. So, can we use research performed by psychologists to make a positive impact in the world? Specifically, how can we use what we already know about people’s mental processes to guide them to behaviors that would benefit us and benefit society as a whole?
Inspired by research compiled by Adam Alter in Drunk Tank Pink, I am exploring the subtle and significant process in which names and colors can affect our opinions, emotions, behavior, and more. I want to educate the public through an analysis and graphic demonstration of how these elements that we take for granted can affect our thoughts and actions.
By creating and designing posters, I want to shift people’s perspectives about colors and investigate feelings toward certain colors. Can we use the effects of colors to our advantage, to help us to feel well-rested or calmer?
In exploring the idea of names as labels, I want to exhibit whether you can predict someone’s behavior and inherent bias. Ultimately, by having viewers interact, I hope to create a dialogue that causes people to reflect on their choices and actions.
In my four years of art school, I learned a lot. I transferred into the Graphic Design program from the School of Education and knew that I made the right decision.
In the past, my Graphic Design projects consisted mostly of topics that are relevant to my life. I’ve designed books on The Bachelor, retail therapy, Ready-to-Wear Runway fashion, and shoes. For my thesis, I wanted to do something more universally relevant, and something that would not lose my interest after an entire semester of work.
I decided to focus on two aspects of our environment that affect us: colors and names.
Colors & their effects
Psychologists have discovered through various studies that colors have the ability to affect our behaviors and emotions for a variety of reasons. Whether these effects are good or bad, becoming aware of some of the mental and physiological impacts of colors can allow us to use specific colors to benefit our lives and subtly enact positive change in society.
I installed vinyl around campus with information about different colors that is intended to pique the interest of readers and encourage them to learn more. The vinyl will include a hashtag that will direct people to an Instagram account. Colored booklets will explain the scientific research behind each color’s effects, and a tri-colored wall at the thesis exhibition will include a mosaic of posters. Some of these posters suggest the effect the color has on people. It is up to the viewer to determine which are accurate and which are not. The booklets include each poster that is based off psychological studies.
Names as Labels
Names convey so much information that it is easy to forget that they are language-bound and do not share universal meanings.
I want to demonstrate specific information that some names carry to explain how they can work in the same way as labels. From just a first or last name, a person can judge sex, socioeconomic class, age, ethnicity, education, and birth place.
Associations of names with certain characteristics that form over time can result in stereotypes and implicit bias. I am not looking at these biases as objective truths but simply as one example supported by statistical information from the United States Census Bureau and Social Security Administration.
Research has shown that names can influence important life outcomes. There is also a strong relationship between income, education, and naming preferences because people from different socioeconomic and educational backgrounds inhabit distinct cultural environments which shape their preferences.
Being aware of bias and educating people that we subconsciously have strong connections may allow them to counteract bias in their own lives.
The final project will feature hanging pieces with two sides so that the audience can only view one side at a time.