The Strange Reason Why "Baker-Miller Pink" Came To Be Painted In So Many Prison Cells

"Baker-Miller Pink is the only color scientifically proven to calm you AND suppress your appetite. I was like, “I NEED this color in my house!”. I then found someone to paint the room and now I’m loving it," Jenner wrote at the time.

While a celebrity making strange claims is par for the course (there are a lot of celebs out there, odds are some of them are going to have some weird beliefs), the idea hasn't sprung from nowhere. In fact, there have been quite a few studies looking into the possibility that "Baker-Miller pink", sometimes known as "Drunk-Tank Pink", is good for reducing anxiety and aggressive/hostile behavior.

The idea has gained a little traction. For instance, as of 2015 around 20 percent of prisons and police stations in Switzerland had at least one cell painted in Baker-Miller pink, with some prisons in the US, the UK, and Austria doing the same. So, where did this idea come from, and is there any truth behind it?

In 1969, researcher Alexander Schauss became interested in the potential physiological effects of color on humans. Of particular interest was a study that appeared to show that lighting had an effect on "deviant" behavior by prisoners. During one experiment, collaborator John N. Ott suggested that perceiving certain colors could even have an effect on muscle strength and performance. 

Schauss repeated some of these experiments, presenting participants with a board colored a certain shade and measuring their physiological responses. His results suggested that color had an effect on the participants, relaxing them, but only when they were shown a certain shade of pink.

"I experimented upon myself and noted that my blood pressure, pulse, and heart rate was unaffected by exposure to this shade of pink. However, after intentionally increasing cardiovascular activity through a series of intense physical exercises, I found that this color had a marked effect on lowering my heart rate, pulse and respiration as compared to other colors," Schauss wrote in one paper, adding that he initially put this down to experimenter bias.

"I awoke one night from a thought that suggested the pink color might have an effect on human aggression. If my heart beat, blood pressure, and pulse, could be reduced by a color, what effect might it have on aggressive behavior?"

Schauss enlisted various collaborators and attempted to study the possibility in real-world settings. In one experiment, with the help of the San Bernadino County Probation Department and supervised by psychologist Dr Paul Boccumini, youths at a detention center were used as subjects. 

When the youths became upset or difficult, they would be placed into a room painted in this shade of pink, or another room on the wing. According to Schauss, this had a profound effect on the subjects, with the youths becoming less verbally aggressive within around 2-3 minutes of being inside the pink room, but not the control room.

"By the 8-9th minute, each youth would assume a relaxed sitting position or lay on his or her back, spread out on the floor while frequently looking at the ceiling," Schauss wrote. "Within 10 minutes, each youth sufficiently calmed down so that he or she could be returned to the main hall."

In other experiments, Schauss found that the shade reduced physical strength, when compared to showing participants in tests a shade of blue. 

While that may sound pretty neat, or worthy of further investigation at least, there is something of a replication problem. Though many prisons began to paint cells or other rooms in Baker-Miller pink, there wasn't much in the way of supporting evidence. Further study, including work by Schauss, found little or no effect. 

In 1981, Schauss and colleagues Robert Pellegrini and Michael Miller conducted one study on a strip search room (SSR) in one county jail in Santa Clara County, California. It likely won't surprise you that this particular room was the site of many incidents, and the investigators attempted to track levels of aggression over time, before and after it was painted this shade of pink. 

"During the first pink month (September, 1979), the relative frequency of SSR incidents was lower than for the previous twelve blue months. But thereafter, this figure increased steadily for the next three months, until by December, 1979, it was higher than for any of the twelve months prior to the paint change," the study's authors wrote. 

In fact, though the effect was likely down to other factors out of the control of the experimenters, incidents in the SSR increased by 3.57 percent overall while it was painted pink.

"No overall aggression-reduction attributable to pink was indicated," they added. "In fact, the average relative frequency of incidents increased slightly, and their month-to-month variability was markedly greater, for the twelve post-as compared with the twelve pre-pink months."

Further studies that investigated the hypothesis, and attempted to blind experimenters, found little evidence for any effect.

"Our results rather speak against an aggression reducing impact of the color pink," the authors of one 2014 paper, who placed prisoners in either pink or white rooms and then logged aggressive incidents, found. "This finding is especially important as earlier studies that emphasize an aggression reducing effect of the color pink suffer from methodological shortcomings, but nevertheless inspired many prisons to paint their cells in pink color. Our investigations question this recent development."

Looking at less dramatic claims – that color affects grip strength – the same team cited a 1988 study that found no supporting evidence.

"Researchers monitored participant's blood pressure, pulse-rate, grip strength, response speed, visuo-motor coordination and the performance on the Digital-Symbol subset of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scales-Revised – a measure for sustained attention," they write. "Significant results were only found in the less important Digital-Symbol measure and this result was attributed to learning effects."

The researchers noted that previous experimenters did not appear to be blind to the hypothesis of the studies, and may have influenced their outcomes unconsciously, or that there could have been a training effect as the order the colors were shown to participants was not varied randomly. Apart from this, the effect observed was very small. 

All in all, we wouldn't go painting our walls in Baker-Miller pink any time soon. Even the studies that showed the most promising signs of an effect had design flaws, and those that didn't show no real difference in behavior on the part of those who viewed the color.