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J Camosun Psyc Res. (2019). Vol. 1, pp. 1-6.
Submitted April 2019; accepted 12 July 2019.

The effect of black and white visual contrast on moral
judgement.
Author: Aya Miyata*
Supervising Instructor: Judy Caldwell, Psyc 201 (“Research Methods”)
Department of Psychology, Camosun College, 3100 Foul Bay Road, Victoria, BC, Canada V8P 5J2
*Corresponding author email: ayamiyata@shaw.ca

ABSTRACT
The present experiment investigated the effect of black and white visual contrast on moral
judgement. Participants were presented with a short text on a moral dilemma with either a black
and white checkered border or a neutral gray border and were then asked to respond to a question
about whether the action taken by the protagonist of the story was morally right or wrong on a 9point scale. It was hypothesized that those in the black and white condition would record
responses that deviated farther from the central score of 5 on the 9-point scale; however, the
results did not support this hypothesis. The results are discussed in terms of why statistical
significance was not found.
1. Introduction
Intuition plays a central role in an
individual’s moral perception of the world.
Contrary to rationalist theorists who argue
that moral judgements are based on careful
critical analysis of the available information,
the social intuitionist model presents an
alternate view in which moral judgements
are primarily the result of ‘gut feelings’
(Haidt, 2001). From the social intuitionist
perspective, judgement based on intuition
comes first, with moral reasoning occurring
only after the judgement has already been
made (Haidt, 2001).
Color is also believed to influence
judgement due to its strong symbolic power
(Gan, Fang, & Ge, 2016). The effect of color
on perception has been well-researched in
fields such as advertising, with one study
finding that consumers could be primed to
perceive an unfamiliar brand as being eco-

friendly by merely changing the color of the
logo (Sundar & Kellaris, 2017). In the field
of sports, Krenn (2015) found that the color
of the uniform worn by athletes affected
how the players were judged.
The colors black and white are
particularly influential in moral judgement
because of the cultural conceptions of
morality that have been attached to these
two colors in western countries (Kareklas,
Brunel, & Coulter, 2014). For instance,
white has positive connotations of purity and
goodness whereas black is often linked to
evil and darkness (Gan et al., 2016). These
associations are thought to have developed
as a result of humans being diurnal creatures
(Lakens,Semin, & Foroni, 2012). For
example, the darkness of night is associated
with danger and uncertainty, which evokes
negative emotions (Sherman & Clore, 2009).
These contrasting connotations of black
and white have been supported in past
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studies. For instance, Sherman and Clore
(2009) used the Stroop effect to test whether
there was an interaction between color and
morality. They found that participants were
able to name the color of the words much
more quickly when the words written in
black were negative moral concepts and the
words written in white were positive moral
concepts (Sherman & Clore, 2009). In
another study, non-Chinese speaking
participants were presented with words
written in Chinese characters and asked to
guess whether they had positive or negative
meanings (Lakens et al., 2012). Similar to
Sherman and Clore’s (2009) findings,
Lakens et al. found that participants were
affected by the color of the font.
Specifically, Chinese characters written in
white font were more likely to be linked to
positive meanings, whereas those in black
font were linked to negative meanings.
Zarkadi and Schnall (2013) studied the
effect of the visual contrast of black and
white on moral judgement by having
participants respond to a moral dilemma
printed on a piece of paper with different
borders. One hundred-eleven volunteers
from a psychology research website were
randomly assigned to one of three conditions
each with a different colour border: black
and white, gray, or blue and yellow. The
participants were asked to read the moral
dilemma and then respond to a question
about whether the action taken by the
protagonist of the story was right or wrong
using a 7-point scale. They hypothesized
that those placed in the black and white
condition would record responses that
deviated more from the central score of 3 on
the 7-point scale due to the contrasting
moral concepts associated with these two
colors. The gray condition served as the
control and the blue and yellow condition
was created to ensure that participants were
not just responding to any visual contrast of

the border regardless of color. Their findings
supported their hypothesis.
The present experiment was based on
Zarkadi and Schnall’s (2013) study but only
two border conditions were used; black and
white versus gray. Specifically, participants
in the black and white condition were given
a short text with a black and white
checkered border. These participants were
asked to read the text and respond to a
question about whether the action taken in
the story was right or wrong using a 9-point
scale. In the gray condition, participants
were given the same text but with a neutral
gray border and were asked to respond to the
same question.
Based on previous research by Zarkadi
and Schnall (2013) which found that
participants in the black and white condition
recorded responses that were on the more
extreme ends of the scale compared to the
participants in the gray condition, it was
expected in the present experiment that the
color of the border would affect the
participants’ moral judgement in the same
way.
2. Methods
2.1 Participants
Thirty college students (6 males and 24
females) participated in this experiment at
the Lansdowne Campus of Camosun
College in Victoria, British Columbia. The
age of participants ranged from 18 to 44
years with a mean age of 23.0 years. The
participants were randomly assigned to the
two groups with each group consisting of 15
participants. The black and white condition
consisted of 13 females and 2 males and
ranged in age from 18 to 44 years with a
mean age of 22.5 years. The gray condition
consisted of 11 females and 4 males and
ranged in age from 18 to 36 years with a
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mean age of 23.5 years. Participants were
randomly selected from various areas around
the college campus. All participants
completed the experiment.

of the borders was the primary focus of this
experiment, the information contained
within the borders was the same (see
Appendix A for the materials used in this
experiment).

2.2 Materials and Apparatus
2.3 Procedure
The materials presented to participants
were drawn from the Zarkadi and Schnall
(2013) study. These materials consisted of a
short text of the Heinz dilemma, which was
originally created by American psychologist
Lawrence Kohlberg (as cited in Zarkadi &
Schnall, 2013). The Heinz dilemma
presented the story of a man named Heinz
whose wife was gravely ill. He discovered
that a pharmacist in town possessed a drug
that could cure her illness; however, he
could not afford to purchase it and the
pharmacist refused to negotiate with him by
lowering the cost. He ultimately makes the
decision to steal the drug in order to save his
wife. Below the short story was a question
printed in bold letters: “How right or wrong
was it of Heinz to steal the drug?” with a
rating scale from “right” (1) to “wrong” (9).
The original study conducted by Zarkadi and
Schnall (2013) implemented a 7-point scale
for recording responses; however, in the
current study the scale was increased from a
7-point to a 9-point scale in order to increase
power through the use of a more sensitive
dependent measure. The text was printed in
black Arial font with the main text in 12point font and the rating scale in 20-point
font.
There were two conditions for this
experiment: the black and white condition
utilized a high-contrast black-and-white
checkered border with a width of 2 cm,
which enclosed the short text of the Heinz
dilemma and the question. The gray
condition utilized a simple gray-toned
border with a border of the same width. As
the effect of the difference in visual contrast

Upon signing the informed consent form,
participants were given either a copy of the
dilemma with the black and white border or
the grey border. These copies were shuffled
in advance to ensure that participants were
randomly assigned to either condition. The
participants were asked to read the text and
respond to the question below the text by
circling their response with a pen that was
provided. No further instruction was
provided and no time restriction was set.
Participants were only given partial
disclosure about the nature of this
experiment prior to the completion of the
task in order to prevent reactivity. They
were then fully debriefed after their response
was recorded and questions about the
experiment were answered as needed.
3. Results
The level of significance set in this
experiment was 0.05. The average deviation
from the central score of the black and white
condition was 2 (SD = 1.21) and the average
deviation from the central score of the gray
condition was 1.53 (SD = 1.09). See Figure
1 for a summary of descriptive statistics.
These data were analyzed using a t-test and
the results were not statistically significant,
t(28) = 1.07, p = 0.29, suggesting that there
was no difference across the two groups in
how much they deviated from the central
score.

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4. Discussion
The hypothesis of the current experiment
was that the scores of the participants in the
black and white condition would deviate
from the central score to a greater degree
than those in the gray condition; however,
this was not supported by the findings.
There are several possible explanations
for the lack of statistical significance. One
possible reason is that the sample size of 30
was too small and did not therefore provide
enough power to detect a difference.
Another possible reason for the lack of
significance could have been social
desirability affecting participant responses.
That is, due to the highly personal nature of
making moral judgements, conducting the
experiment face-to-face with the
experimenter present may have affected the
ability of participants to respond honestly to
the moral dilemma.
In order to overcome these issues in
future studies, it may be more appropriate to
conduct the experiment using a mail
questionnaire rather than a face-to-face
format. Not only would this allow the
experimenter to efficiently administer the

conditions to more
participants, but it
would also address the
problem of social
desirability bias as
participants would not
need to make moral
judgements in front of
the experimenter.
The current results
are not consistent with
previous research
which found that
colors, particularly
black and white,
affected moral
judgement (Zarkadi & Schnall, 2013);
however, this subject matter is still worthy
of further study due to its potentially widereaching implications in the criminal justice
system. For instance, if those who are
responsible for making a determination of
guilt are swayed by factors other than sound
moral reasoning, individuals whose cases
are going through the criminal justice
system could be significantly impacted. The
only way to ensure that this does not happen
is to improve our understanding of the role
external factors like color play in such
evaluations.
References
Gan, T., Fang, W., & Ge, L. (2016).
Colours’ impact on morality: Evidence
from event-related potentials. Scientific
Reports, 6, 38373.
https://doi.org/10.1038/srep38373
Haidt, J. (2001). The emotional dog and its
rational tail: A social intuitionist
approach to moral judgment.
Psychological Review, 108(4), 814–834.
https://doi.org/10.1037/0033295X.108.4.814
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Kareklas, I., Brunel, F. F., & Coulter, R. A.
(2014). Judgement is not color blind: The
impact of automatic color preference on
product and advertising preferences.
Journal of Consumer Psychology, 24(1),
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Krenn, B. (2015). The effect of uniform
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be good: Grounding valence in brightness
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Sundar, A., & Kellaris, J. (2017). How logo
colors influence shoppers’ judgments of
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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2012.11.012

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Appendix A
The materials used in the black and white
condition and the gray condition,
respectively.

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