Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve likely heard
of “The Dress”. I’m sure many of you have had heated debates amongst
friends about The Dress. If you're like me, than you swore your allegiance to one
side of the debate with conviction only to watch The Dress transform before
your very eyes. If you have no idea what I am talking about, I suggest you
check out the dress that set the Twittersphere ablaze the night of February 26th.
The Dress is black and blue. The great thing about that last line, and the
reason for the controversy, is that many of you just thought to yourself
“Duh!”, while an equal portion of you thought “um…if by black and blue, you
mean white and gold than yeah”. Many raced to social media to voice their
opinions including celebrities, senators, even yours truly.
While a cynic could argue that this is just another sign that social media is ruining society, it also accomplished something pretty cool: It got America, if only for a fleeting moment, interested in science. America needed answers and, as they should, they turned to science. Well okay, Wired Magazine’s version of science. While I would not recommend that any of you cite Wired Magazine in your next scientific paper, the article did contain some real scientific information and was shared over 48,000 times (for the sake of comparison, this week’s most popular article on the web’s most popular science website amassed a paltry 3,000 shares). Consequently, thousands of Americans got a lesson on how we perceive color that they would not have gotten if it were not for The Dress. Pretty cool!
Nature Magazine, a slightly more credible source, got on board this month and expanded on the reason why The Dress caused you and your roommate to stop talking to each other for a day or two. The perception of color has both objective and subjective components. Sure the true color of a material depends on the physical properties that cause it to absorb some wavelengths of light while reflecting others, but how our individual brains perceive color is largely based on context and personal bias. This fact is the reason that objects of the same color can be perceived asdifferent just by changing their orientation. It is what allows us to make banknotes that expose counterfeiters. It can even trick experienced ecologists into thinking that droughts make the rainforest greener! When it comes to The Dress, it is the blue background ambience of the photograph that causes the mind to be tricked into seeing white and gold. This is nothing new to psychologists, but nothing has ever put the phenomenon on a world stage quite like The Dress.
Posted by John Slepchuk, Group C
While a cynic could argue that this is just another sign that social media is ruining society, it also accomplished something pretty cool: It got America, if only for a fleeting moment, interested in science. America needed answers and, as they should, they turned to science. Well okay, Wired Magazine’s version of science. While I would not recommend that any of you cite Wired Magazine in your next scientific paper, the article did contain some real scientific information and was shared over 48,000 times (for the sake of comparison, this week’s most popular article on the web’s most popular science website amassed a paltry 3,000 shares). Consequently, thousands of Americans got a lesson on how we perceive color that they would not have gotten if it were not for The Dress. Pretty cool!
Nature Magazine, a slightly more credible source, got on board this month and expanded on the reason why The Dress caused you and your roommate to stop talking to each other for a day or two. The perception of color has both objective and subjective components. Sure the true color of a material depends on the physical properties that cause it to absorb some wavelengths of light while reflecting others, but how our individual brains perceive color is largely based on context and personal bias. This fact is the reason that objects of the same color can be perceived asdifferent just by changing their orientation. It is what allows us to make banknotes that expose counterfeiters. It can even trick experienced ecologists into thinking that droughts make the rainforest greener! When it comes to The Dress, it is the blue background ambience of the photograph that causes the mind to be tricked into seeing white and gold. This is nothing new to psychologists, but nothing has ever put the phenomenon on a world stage quite like The Dress.
Posted by John Slepchuk, Group C
I am glad that you posted about this! Although it may seem silly, this is definitely an interesting topic. Very interesting that this same phenomenon tricks ecologists into thinking that droughts make the rain forest more green. Cool post.
ReplyDeleteErika Nevins
Thank you. I was at first hesitant about whether or not the topic was appropriate for this class. However, i decided that if i were to ever run a blog outside of this class i would want to gear it towards people that are not scientists by nature. I think it is important that society as a whole has a basic grasp on scientific concepts. Knowing how viral this topic became, I thought it was a good opportunity to practice writing for a mass audience, and directing them towards interesting and related topics in science.
DeleteThis was certainly a topic of debate amongst my friends, so its nice to see the scientific explanation behind the phenomena. Perhaps you could expand more on the explanations in your writings? Great post!
ReplyDelete-Hilary Mello
Going into more detail, the phenomenon has to do with the lighting in which the picture was taken. Our eyes evolved to detect light and color over a spectrum of background lighting. The overall ambiance of the sky changes over the course of the day. In the middle of the day the sky may be blue but at sunset the sky can be a multitude of colors (pink,red, purple, etc.). Our eyes evolved to correct for these different scenarios so that a red fruit will appear red regardless of the time of day. The cognitive biases that I mentioned above affect how our eyes correct for the strange lighting of the photo. As Nature explains, "The brains of people who read the overall ambience as too blue will overcompensate, seeing the dress as white and gold. Others, whose visual systems read that the lighting was not blue enough, saw the dress as blue and black."
DeleteThis controversy blew me and my friends mind. We were all in a circle and 2/5 saw white and gold and the other 3 saw blue and black. There are several sources going around that day saying that the color you perceived depended on your current mood and emotions. Which I thought was mind blowing but at first a saw the dress as white and gold and after 3 hours of a fustration dance practice, I saw black and blue
ReplyDelete-Barbara Afogho
When I saw the title to this article I felt an overwhelming sense of "not this again". Reluctantly, I read it anyway because the science of it all intrigued me. I understand how different people could perceive the colors differently, even if blue/black and white/gold are drastically dissimilar. The one thing that I'm still a little confused by is how the same person could be seeing both versions, as I eventually did.
ReplyDelete-Meghan Harrington
I agree, the fact that some people are able to see both versions is the most interesting part about the illusion. This is because personal biases can change the way we perceive color. In this example if you originally see white and gold, but are told by all your friends that it is blue and black, its possible that your bias can change and in turn the colors you see.
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