Influence of ink color on handwriting of normal and psychiatric groups

Abstract

A standard sentence was written by a group of 66 psychiatric hospital patients and a group of 66 college students in red, green, and black inks. The order of colors was systematically varied. Analysis of variance showed all sources to be of such magnitude as expected by chance except differences between normal (college students) and abnormal, which were significant at the 5% level. The author concludes that size of handwriting is therefore not influenced by color of ink, and that popular concepts of the influence of color on motor performance should be revised. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)