Cognitive Design

One way to create preference for something is with lighting.   We like things better when they are illuminated  from the left.  This is true for many things from paintings to advertisements.  The position of the source of light  also impacts cognitive task performance. For example, left side lighting improves our ability to identify shapes and perform visual search.

The leftward lighting bias is strong enough to factor into a cognitive design. For evidence, take the article just published in the research journal, Laterality on Leftward Lighting in Advertisements. The authors claim:

 ”Overall, participants indicated that they preferred advertisements with leftward lighting and were more likely to purchase these products in the future than when the same products were lit from the right.” 

The article provides an excellent synopsis of other leftward lighting biases with pointers into the literature.

 Interested to hear from readers that have used this bias in an application.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 9th, 2011 at 12:14 pm and is filed under Cognitive Bias. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.