The Dress that Broke the Internet
I’m sure everyone has heard of this dress before, right? If you are not familiar, the picture of this dress went viral a few years ago because everyone on the internet could not agree whether it was blue and black or white and gold in color. If you ask me, I would say I see white and gold. How is it possible that we all look at the same picture but see completely different colors?
Seeing isn’t always believing
But why is this true? Why is everyone seeing this picture differently? Instead of recording the world like a camera, our brain actively interprets what we see using light, context, and past experiences (Foster 2011). I’m here to talk about the neuroscience behind perceptions and why different people see different colors in the same picture.
Battle of the Brain
Studies have shown that there are stark individual differences in how people see color (Lafer-Sousa 2015). For example, how I define “red” is not the same way you define “red.” One specific study looked at which wavelengths of light were recognized in people who looked at the picture of the dress. People who prefer a more illuminating light, like a blue sky, saw white and gold because they were recognizing shorter wavelengths of light. On the other hand, people who favor warm light see blue and black because they see the longer wavelengths of light (Lafer-Sousa 2015).
Can you see it both ways?
Now that you know that people see both color schemes, are you able to see the other one? Personally, I am only able to see white and gold. Other people can switch between white & gold and blue & black. The quality of being able to switch between your perceptions is called a multistable image. Most of the people who are able to switch between the two color schemes in this picture have a background in art, so they are well-experienced in different color perceptions (Lafer-Sousa 2017).
References
Foster, D. H. (2011). Color constancy. Vision Res, 51(7), 674–700. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2010.09.006
Lafer-Sousa, R., Hermann, K. L., & Conway, B. R. (2015). Striking individual differences in color perception uncovered by ‘the dress’ photograph. Current biology : CB, 25(13), R545–R546. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.04.053
Lafer-Sousa, R., & Conway, B. R. (2017). Journal of Vision, 17(2), 25. https://doi.org/10.1167/17.2.25
