Many years ago I watched a documentary where it was said that pale mint green was often chosen for control panels because it was deemed it had a calming effect on the operators.

Everyone knows you gotta keep your peepers minty fresh

Design aesthetics change for different reason. The chemical plant I work at, we had a colorful control system but are switching to a duller color one that looks gray scale and colors are reserved for alarms. The theory behind it, color on a grey scale screen will capture attention, but if everything has color, the uniqueness of flashing red for alarms is drowned out and doesn't draw the attention as well. It stands out better.

There was a lot of UX research that went into colour selection, including for airplanes. It's unfortunately hard to track the papers, but usually things like base colours went into norms and requirements so even if people didn't know why, they followed the results of the research.

Because nobody had to sell anything to their superiors.

In a related note, the Soviet Union had commercials on domestic TV to induce demand, just like everywhere else, but due to the different business-incentives in the Soviet system the end result are downright weird:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6LAVk1sHW8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzlzx8D4hYw

It's the uncanny-valley of media.

I am pretty sure the chicken one is meant to induce nightmares

There was no big choice of paint available to get. Soviets had other important spending like military back then. Who needs paint!?