Author's name: Adam Al-Tar

The academic journal Orthomolecular Psychiatry began its final issue in 1979 with a classic paper that fired the imagination of prison guards, football coaches, and disgruntled parents. The author, Professor Alexander Schauss, described a simple experiment involving 153 healthy young men, a researcher, two large sheets of colored cardboard, and a well-lit laboratory room. One by one, the young men entered the laboratory to participate in an unusual strength test. The experiment began with the men staring at a piece of cardboard. For half the men, the cardboard was dark blue, and for the other half, it was bright pink. After a full minute, the researcher asked the men to raise their arms in front of their bodies while he pressed down just enough to force their arms back to their sides. When the men's strength had recovered, the researcher jotted down a few quick notes before repeating the experiment. He first asked the men to stare at the other piece of cardboard and then repeated the strength test.

The results were remarkably consistent. All but two of the young men were significantly more weak after staring at the pink cardboard, and their resistance to the researcher's pressure was almost non-existent. The blue cardboard maintained their full strength, regardless of whether they stared at it during the first or second strength test. The pink color seemed to temporarily saps the young men's strength.

To prove that the effect wasn't a coincidence, Schauss conducted a second experiment, this time using a more precise force gauge. He asked 38 young men to squeeze a measuring device known as a dynamometer. All 38 participants, without exception, squeezed less forcefully after staring at the pink cardboard.

Schauss began touting the calming and miraculous power of bright pink in public lectures across the United States. In one televised lecture, a winner of the Mr. California Muscle contest performed several simple bicep curls but struggled to complete a single one after staring at the pink construction paper. Given the power of the color, Schauss suggested that correctional officials should consider placing unruly inmates in a pink cell. Two commanding officers at the U.S. Naval Correctional Center in Seattle, Washington, repainted one of the cells pink. For seven months, Petty Officer Gene Packer and Commandant Ron Miller observed newly arrived inmates enter the pink cell angry and agitated and emerge calmer after 15 minutes. New inmates are typically aggressive, but officers reported no violent incidents during the seven-month trial period.

Fans honored the enterprising officers by naming the color "Baker-Miller Pink." Other correctional facilities across the country painted their cells the same shade. At one jail in San Jose, California, some young inmates suffered such a reaction to the color pink that their exposure to the color had to be limited to just a few minutes a day. When smaller county jails began housing drunk and violent inmates, they placed them in pink cells, and the color was unofficially dubbed the pink cell color.