Baker-Miller pink

The original claim

Schauss believed that pink had a direct physical effect, lowering heart rate and muscle strength. He persuaded two officers at the Navy's correctional centre, Gene Baker and Ron Miller, to paint an admission cell in a pink he had mixed from white and red paint, and named the colour after them. The centre reported that violent incidents in the cell stopped during the trial. There was no comparison group, staff knew what was being tested, and new arrivals were held in the cell only briefly. All of these make the result hard to interpret.

What later studies found

Other researchers tried to repeat the finding under tighter conditions through the 1980s, with mixed and mostly negative results. Some jails that tried pink cells reported that inmates grew more agitated after longer periods in them. In 2015 a Swiss team led by Oliver Genschow tested the idea properly in a prison, assigning inmates at random to pink or white detention cells. They found no difference in aggression. A newer, paler shade sold as Cool Down Pink has been used in Swiss and German cells, with the same lack of solid evidence.

Why the story lasted

The claim is simple, cheap to try and pleasing to believe, and it was repeated in textbooks and design guides for decades. Some sports teams painted the visitors' changing room pink in the hope of weakening opponents. Critics have also pointed out that the choice of pink leans on its link with girls and softness, which makes it a form of humiliation as much as a treatment, and some prisoners have objected on those grounds. Baker-Miller pink is best remembered as a lesson in how a small, uncontrolled study can become accepted fact.

Colours on this page

Sources and further reading

• Baker–Miller pink on Wikipedia
• BBC Future: Do colours really warp our behaviour?
• NPR: 'Drunk Tank Pink' Finds Clues To Behavior