A dress of a strange color from the Internet. Scientists have explained the differences in the perception of the color of the same dress. Why does everyone see the dress differently
A photo of a dress that a girl from Scotland posted on the Internet divided the whole world into two camps - some see it dress in blue and black, other - in white and gold. Who is right and who is deceived by his sight?
The controversy over the color of the dress erupted after Scottish resident Caitlin McNeil posted a picture of the dress on her blog and asked the question to Internet users: “Help me, is this dress white and gold or blue and black? Me and my friends can't agree and we're going crazy." Within a couple of hours, the photo of the dress was scattered all over the Internet, and the world was divided into two camps: some began to claim that the dress was blue and black, others were sure that it was white and gold.
What color do you think the dress is in the photo?
It should be noted that there are much more people who see the white-gold color (according to numerous surveys on the Internet). In fact, the dress is blue and black - this was confirmed by its owner Caitlin. However, this fact did not close the debate about color.
Why do some people see the dress as blue and others as white?
When asked why someone sees blue-black, and someone sees white-golden colors in the photo of the dress, scientists tried to answer. The human retina consists of two types of photoreceptors - cones and rods. The rods are more sensitive to light and are responsible for perceiving the shape rather than the color of objects. Cones, on the contrary, are responsible for the perception of color, and not for the degree of illumination of the object. In other words, in the dark we perceive the world with rods rather than cones.
So, the susceptibility of colors depends on what is more in the human retina - cones or rods, as well as on how the object is illuminated. “Our visual system is used to rejecting information about the light source and scooping information about the actual reflected light. I have been studying individual color vision for 30 years, and in this case I see the most differences in individual perceptions of all that I have seen, ”says Jay Neitz, a neuroscientist from Washington.
And what color do you see the dress - black and blue or white and gold? We are waiting for your comments and do not forget to press the buttons and
Today, almost the whole world is wondering: what color is this dress? Some see it as white and gold, and some as black and blue. And no, this is not a feature on the sites, this is the same photo (my colleague and I looked at the monitor and saw different colors).
Let's try to explain why we all see a dress of a different color.
No, it has nothing to do with some cells in your eyes.
It's about how your brain interprets the light that enters your eyes.
"We always make a decision about the amount of light that enters the retina of our eyes. This light, called brightness, is always a combination of how much light hits an object and how light is reflected on the object's surface," says the psychology professor. Kedar Riner.
In the case of a dress, some people believe that a large amount of light hits the dress and therefore they see it as black and blue (if not in such harsh colors, then significantly dark). And other people, deciding that a little light gets on the dress, see it as white and gold, Day.Az reports citing BuzzFeed.
The same trick happens with Adelson's famous chessboard shadow illusion.
Let's check. See, in the picture below, square A is exactly the same color as the squareBbut they look completely different.
Okay, but why do different people's brains interpret light differently?
Our vision largely depends on the so-called "top-down" processing - a gradual transition from the general perception (recognition) of the whole to the selection in the perception of its individual details. Top-down processing starts from our brain and flows downward, filtering information through our experiences and expectations. Therefore, we all see a dress of a different color.
Also, perception can be influenced by what you looked at before you looked at the dress.
Another guess: because people are active during the daytime, they most often experience daylight. It can range from pinkish red to blue-white to reddish. "This will happen if the visual system sees an object and tries to ignore the chromatic shift of daylight," says Bevil Conway, a neuroscientist at Wellesley College. dress". He probably means the current lighting around the person.
The dress, whose color people see differently, blew the minds of Internet users around the world On social networks, they argue for more than a day about what color the dress in the photo of the Tumblr user under the nickname Swiked is blue and black or white and gold. Jane Nitz, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington, explained to The Wired why some people see different colors in the same image. Human eyes and brains have evolved to distinguish colors in a world illuminated by the sun. Light enters the eye through the lens - different wavelengths report different colors. Light hits the retina at the back of the eye, where pigments activate neural connections in the visual cortex, the part of the brain that translates signals into images. The brain figures out what color light is reflected from the object that the eyes see, and separates this color from the color it considers "real". "Our visual system is supposed to throw out information about lighting and extract information about the color that is reflected in reality," Naitz said. “But I have been studying individual differences in color perception for 30 years, and these differences in dress color perception are the most noticeable I have ever seen,” the neuroscientist added. Normally, the color perception system does not fail. Humanity has evolved to see in daylight, however it changes colors. The color of the sun's light changes from pinkish-red at dawn and blue-white at noon to red at dusk. "Your visual system looks at these color changes and tries to ignore some of the day's color shifts," said Wellesley College neurologist Bevil Conway. "Thus, people either do not take into account the blue color, and then they see white and gold, or gold - and then looking at a blue and black dress," the scientist concluded (he sees blue and orange in the photograph). In other words, in the case of photography, people take the light in the background for sunlight and conclude that the dress is in the shade, which means that its light areas should become bluish. So, there is no pure white color, but our brain thinks out the whiteness of snow or a dress for us. Others do not take into account the light in the background and see a blue dress. They call gold fragments black, because they remember that if you look at a black object in the bright sun, you can see gold. In addition, it is likely that some of the blue-seeing people knew in advance about the real color of the dress, and because of this, the brain gave the correct answer. If you take a sample of the colors from the dress in Photoshop, it turns out that the colors of the dress are bluish and greenish-brown, writes Snob.ru. Swiked posted a photo of the dress on February 25, asking what color it was. According to her, she argued about it with friends. Internet users quickly began to argue about this topic, and the hashtag #thedress Topped the top twitter trends in the US. Kim Kardashian (white and gold), singer Kanye West (blue and black), singer Taylor Swift (blue and black) and David Duchovny (greenish blue) joined the discussion. The Sony Play Station account in Australia also managed to joke about this topic: "Introducing the new white and gold Dualshok 4 controller." The manufacturer of the dress has already stated that so far only the blue version is being sold, but soon white and gold will also be on sale.
A photo of a strange dress (pictured in the middle), posted on the eve of the BuzzFeed portal, literally blew up the Internet. “Guys help me, is this dress white and gold or blue and black? My friends and I can't agree and we're going crazy,” wrote one girl, after which millions of users around the world went crazy.
Few people could imagine that a simple picture can divide Internet users into two irreconcilable camps. Some vehemently claim that they clearly see a dark blue dress with black stripes of lace, others a white dress with gold lace.
Celebrity opinions are also divided. , see the dress as white and gold, and Kanye West as black and blue. In fact, this dispute is not social in nature, but biological. The difference in perception is explained by how the human eye and brain have evolved to perceive the world illuminated by light. Light entering the human eye hits the retina, which consists of two types of photoreceptors - cones and rods, which are taught in school. The rods are more sensitive to light and are more responsible for perceiving the shape rather than the color of objects. Cones, on the contrary, are more responsible for the perception of color, rather than the degree of illumination of the object. In other words, at dusk we perceive the world more with rods than with cones.
The color scheme in which various objects are perceived depends on what is more in the retina of a particular person - rods or cones, and on what kind of light the object is illuminated.
Rods perceive light intensity due to the visual pigment rhodopsin, which is very sensitive to light of low intensity and is destroyed when exposed to bright light. At the same time, it takes about 45 minutes to restore it - that's why a person needs time to get used to twilight lighting normally.
For the same reason, if a person looks at a dress in bright light, then leaves for half an hour in a dark room and returns, then most likely the color of the dress will change for him.
“Our visual system is used to rejecting information about the light source and scooping information about the actual reflected light. I've been studying individual color vision for 30 years and in this case I see the most differences in individual perceptions of all that I have seen, ”says Jay Neitz, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington.
What's more, color perception is affected by how our brain tries to adjust colors and light levels to figure out what color an object really is. Just as modern cameras adjust light balance, the human brain does this automatically.
But at the same time, different people either ignore the blue hues, perceiving the image as white and gold, or ignore the yellow hues, seeing the blue and black dress.
Many other optical illusions have a similar nature, including the famous example of black and white checkerboard cells.
Most likely, everyone remembers the very dress that turned the entire Internet on its ears. People vigorously discussed and argued what color it is - white-gold or blue-black. Now the researchers decided to approach this issue from a scientific point of view.
What have scientists learned?
Research scientists have led to conclusions that indicate that the difference in human perception of color largely depends on how the human brain generally perceives colors in daylight. It has long been known that the shapes and colors of an object can be viewed by two people in completely different ways. However, it was the dress that became one of the most dramatic and sensational examples. And now, with the study of the colors in this dress, it's clear that the well-known question of whether all people see colors in the same way, the answer is not necessarily yes.
Color Constancy
In one study, researchers asked nearly 1,500 people to look at a photo of a dress they had never seen before and say what color it was. 57 percent of those polled said it was blue and black, 30 percent said it was white and gold, 11 percent described it as blue and brown, and 2 percent chose another answer. Some subjects reported that they saw very different colors when they looked at the photograph a second time later. Differences in color perception are due to the fact that the brain makes up the idea of lighting, adjusting the colors so that they look the same in one object in any light. This property is known as color constancy. People who saw the white-gold color thought the dress was illuminated by bright daylight, so their brains ignored the shorter blue wavelengths. Those who saw the blue-black color suggested that the dress was illuminated by warm artificial light. Interestingly, older people were more likely to see the white and gold dress. The reason for this may be the fact that older people are more active during the day, while younger people start their activity in the late afternoon.
Daylight vs artificial lighting
Another group of researchers had fifteen volunteers look at the dress, but it was shown on a high-resolution screen with controlled lighting and precise screen settings. Instead of seeing the standard colors of the dresses, the subjects reported seeing a range of shades. Moreover, if the brightness of the light increased, they saw a white dress, and if it decreased, they saw a blue one. The researchers found that more often than not, people reported seeing the same colors that can be found in daylight, which is usually bluish at noon and yellowish in the late afternoon. Thus, this phenomenon would not be possible if the dress were, for example, red. It was blue and yellow (gold) colors that created such a hype around this dress, in a different situation no one would have paid attention to it.
New color property
A third study was conducted on 87 college students who were also asked to report the color of their dress. About the same number of people said they see blue-black and white-gold. The researchers then inverted the image so that the light bands were pure gold and the dark bands were blue. And in a repeat study, 95 percent of participants reported seeing light yellow stripes. Thus, a new property of color was discovered, which concerns the perception of blue and yellow colors. People are more likely to perceive a color as white or gray if the content of blue changes in it. However, it is not as noticeable with other colors such as yellow, red or green.
