Effects of indoor lighting, gender, and age on mood and cognitive performance

The impact of indoor lighting, gender, and age on mood and cognitive perfor mance was examined in a between-subject experiment. It was hypothesized tha t indoor lighting is an affective source that may convey emotional meanings differentiated by gender, age, or both. A two-way interaction between type of lamp and age on negative mood showed that younger adults (about 23 year s old) best preserved a negative mood in the "warm" (more reddish) white li ghting while working with a battery of cognitive tasks for 90 minutes; for the older adults (about 65 years old), "cool" (more bluish) white lighting accounted for the identical effect. The younger females were shown to prese rve the positive mood as well as the negative mood better than the younger males, and a main effect of age in all cognitive tasks revealed the superio rity of younger to older adults in cognitive performance.