UX perspective of the Blue Dot Effect in Psychology

The “Blue Dot Effect” in psychology highlights how people tend to notice negative stimuli more readily than positive or neutral ones.

Initially, Gilbert and David Levari observed the effect in the study, which involved three series of tests.

🔵 Blue or Purple dot test

In this test, participants were shown 1000 dots and asked to identify the blue ones. After 200 trials, the number of blue dots was reduced for another 200 trials. What happened? Participants increasingly misidentified bluish-purple dots as blue despite being warned about the reduction​​.

The experiments highlight a fundamental bias in human perception. As the occurrence of a specific stimulus (like blue dots) decreases, our perceptual threshold adjusts, leading us to categorize similar but distinct stimuli under the same label. People tend to maintain a constant level of alertness or concern, even when the stimulus frequency decreases.

🔵 Threatening Faces test

Similar to the dots, when shown faces, participants expanded their definition of what constituted a threat as the number of threatening faces decreased​​.