A growing literature suggests the possibility that brightness (vs. darkness) affects myriad human behaviors and how people think. One stream suggests that brightness increases self-awareness. We extend these findings and formally hypothesize that brightness (vs. darkness) increases self-accountability, thereby motivating people to take actions to meet their self-standards for health, of which most people generally fall short. Three experimental studies were conducted. The results indicate that brightness increases healthier food choices (Study 1) and physical activity intentions (Study 2). Self-accountability mediates the effect (Study 2), while manipulating self-accountability moderates it (Study 3), thereby providing evidence for its likely causal role in explaining the impact of brightness on facilitating healthy behaviors. The findings offer insights into the positive benefits of brightness beyond past findings that it improves mood and psychological well-being. Limitations of the current research as well as future research directions are discussed.

越来越多的文献表明亮度（与黑暗）可能会影响无数人类行为和人们的思维方式。一个流表明亮度会增加自我意识。我们扩展了这些发现，并正式假设明亮（与黑暗相比）会增加自我责任感，从而激励人们采取行动来满足他们对健康的自我标准，而大多数人通常达不到这些标准。进行了三项实验研究。结果表明，亮度增加了更健康的食物选择（研究 1）和身体活动意图（研究 2）。自我负责调节这种效果（研究 2），而操纵自我负责会调节这种效果（研究 3），从而为其在解释亮度对促进健康行为的影响方面可能起到的因果作用提供证据。这些发现提供了对亮度的积极好处的见解，超越了过去的发现，它可以改善情绪和心理健康。讨论了当前研究的局限性以及未来的研究方向。