Waiting for the Web: How Screen Color Affects Time Perception
Gorn, Chattopadhyay, Sengupta and Tripathi investigate how the colour of a web page's background screen during download relates to perceived download speed. Drawing on links between colour and relaxation and between relaxation and time perception, they predict that background colour changes perceived quickness and that relaxation mediates this. In a series of experiments they manipulate hue, value and chroma. For each dimension, colours that induce more relaxed states lead to greater perceived quickness.
Gorn, Chattopadhyay, Sengupta and Tripathi investigate how the colour of a web page's background screen during download relates to perceived download speed. Drawing on links between colour and relaxation and between relaxation and time perception, they predict that background colour changes perceived quickness and that relaxation mediates this. In a series of experiments they manipulate hue, value and chroma. For each dimension, colours that induce more relaxed states lead to greater perceived quickness.
Written from the abstract as shown on the OpenAlex record, read 2026-11-04.
What our sources record
Recorded when this source was checked, figures included, with page references and quotation marks removed.
doi:10.1509/jmkr.41.2.215.28668. Read at the level of the abstract (PolyU repository record).