Pen pal
P-618 Words Lucie Castillo-Ros
What comes to your mind upon hearing the word pink? Did you think of a prison? This is the story of Baker-Miller Pink, a shade of pink chosen for its calming abilities and used in carceral facilities. Let’s dive into the bizarre tale of this colour and its unconventional application.
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The story of Baker-Miller Pink begins in 1969. Newly graduated in psychology from the University of New Mexico, Alexander G. Schauss comes across the work of Swiss psychotherapist Max Lüscher (1923-2017). In his research “Colour as an aid in psychological diagnosis” (Lüscher,1947) , he presents the Lüscher colour test, which aims to establish someone’s ‘current’ emotional state based on their colour preferences. Upon reading this theory, Schauss starts to wonder: if our emotions can be visually and universally represented by colours, could colours retrospectively influence our emotions? The following 10 years will see Schauss perform a series of research experiments on the influence of colours on human behaviours. In 1978, one of his experiments covers the muscular reaction of individuals when presented an 18 by 24 inch monochromatic cardboard plate. Some of the results suggest a ‘relaxing’ effect of the colour pink on the subjects. Schauss wakes up one night with a thought: what if pink could reduce human aggressivity?1 From this point onward, his work will focus on pink and its potential applications. After experimenting on hundreds of shades upon himself and other subjects, he identifies a particular shade as the most efficient in “reducing hyperexcitability”2. This shade he names P-618.
Baker-Miller Pink or P-618| RGB: (255, 145, 175).
But to demonstrate his new theory, he needs an environment to test it. However, the connotation of pink as a feminine colour presents a difficulty to find a correctional facility to perform his planned experiments. This was until Commander Baker and Gene Miller, officers at the Naval Correctional Center in Seattle, came into the picture. After attending Schauss’ classes on innovative treatments techniques and correctional research, and without his knowledge, Baker and Miller take the initiative of painting in Schauss’ pink the interior of one admissions cell: P-618 becomes the Baker-Miller Pink. After 156 days of monitoring, they will find a 100% reduction of erratic or hostile behaviours incidents since the redesign of the cell. Following this initial result, additional research is performed at John Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore. Experiments continue throughout the end of the 1970s in a few other correctional facilities, youth probation centres as well as psychological centres. Most facilities show a mixed to drastic reduction of aggressive behaviour due to the presence of Baker-Miller Pink. At least, these are the results Schauss’ 1985 article “The Physiological Effect of Colour on the Suppression of Human Aggression: Research on Baker-Miller Pink” present. Indeed, despite these positive results, many contemporaries of Schauss highlight questionable or even inadequate methods of research and data recording practices, and the existence of conflicting results. The outcome
