VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Feb. 6 (UPI) -- Red is the most effective at enhancing attention to detail, while blue is best at boosting creative thinking, Canadian researchers said.

From 2007 to 2008, researchers at the University of British Columbia tracked more than 600 participants' performance on six cognitive tasks that required either detail-orientation or creativity. Most experiments were conducted on computers, with a screen that was red, blue or white.

Study author Juliet Zhu said red boosted performance on detail-oriented tasks such as memory retrieval and proofreading by as much as 31 percent compared to blue.

The study, published in Science Express, found that for creative tasks such as brainstorming, blue environmental cues prompted participants to produce twice as many creative outputs as when under the red color condition.

"Thanks to stop signs, emergency vehicles and teachers' red pens, we associate red with danger, mistakes and caution -- red activates makes us vigilant and thus helps us perform tasks where careful attention is required," Zhu said in a statement.

"Through associations with the sky, the ocean and water, most people associate blue with openness, peace and tranquility -- it make people feel safe about being creative and exploratory."

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