Do you remember the song Do You See What I See? Released in 1987, this was the fourteenth single by Australian pub rock band Hunters & Collectors. This was nothing to do with the song Do You Hear What I Hear? Originally released in 1962 (lyrics by Noël Regney and music by Gloria Shayne), this song became a hit when Bing Crosby recorded his version in 1963. Bing subsequently presented it on the Bob Hope Christmas television special at the end of that year. As fate would have it, neither of these songs have anything to do with this blog (I'm sorry, I got carried away).
Things are typically much more complicated and interesting than we think (except the French). Well, at least, things are typically more complicated than I think.
Take color, for example. When I was a kid, I read a book that explained how the color fairies came out at night and touched everything up, which is why all the flowers in the garden look so bright and colorful when you see them in the morning. Well, that made total sense to me, but we digress…
When you are a kid and your parents tell you that tomatoes are red, the sky is blue, and grass is green, you have no reason to doubt them, but how do you know that what you see as being green is the same as what other people would say was green?
I’m not talking about people who are color blind. Although, having said this, I do remember reading a story about a kid who was reading an article in a magazine that showed a series of plates from the Ishihara test. You know the ones—circles filled with small bubbles of different sizes and colors. Like the example shown here in which the number “74” should be seen by viewers with normal color vision; viewers with red-green color blindness will see it as “21”; and viewers with monochromacy may see nothing at all (see also my paper on The Evolution of Color Vision).
Returning to the kid reading the magazine. He didn’t see the numbers the article said he was supposed to see. He thought it was a joke. He asked his brothers and sisters. That was the first time his family realized he was color blind.
But we digress. In an article on Psychology Today we read, “Research has found that we experience colors differently, depending on gender, national origin, ethnicity, geographical location, and what language we speak.” A designer on Cieden tells us that, “Different cultures perceive colors differently, which affects their emotional responses and interpretations of color.” And an article on Science Daily informs us that, “The language being actively used by bilingual individuals can significantly affect their perception of color.” And then things start to get complicated.
What all this means in a crunchy nutshell is that, while we might all agree a Red-Green-Blue (RGB) value of 0,255,0 represents a gorgeous green (assuming 8-bits per channel) and an RGB value of 0,0,255 is a solid blue, our categorization of colors like 0,255,215 and 0,215,255, for example, may vary all over the place.
My chum Jay Dowling just sent me a link to a site that poses the question Is My Blue Your Blue? When you click this link, you are presented with a screen that some will consider to be green, while others will perceive it as being blue (obviously this isn’t a controlled test because different computer screens will vary in their color presentation).
At the bottom of the screen are buttons for you to click—one button says, “This is blue” while the other says “This is green.” When you click one of these buttons, you are presented with a different color, and you make your choice again.
After repeating this for various shades and hues (I always get confused between hues, tints, tones, and shades), you are presented with your result. My test informed me that my boundary is at hue 173, which is greener than 63% of the population.
This explains a lot. We have a watering can at home. I say this watering can is green. My wife tells me it’s blue. Until now, I’ve always known that I’m obviously right and she’s obviously wrong. Now all has been made clear and I know why she’s wrong LOL.
How about you? I’d love to hear if you take the test and the results surprise you or teach you something new about yourself (including the fact that you don’t trust tests of this type).
Well, my boundary is 165, Max, so I’m greener that you. However, I would have selected most of these intermediate shades as aqua or turquoise, so I see this test as forcing me to make a false choice. It tests more your definition of a color rather than the color you’re actually seeing. I guess I assign aqua and turquoise to blue, even though I clearly see them as aqua and turquoise.
Hi Steve — I’ve been thinking about this some more. If we gathered a random collection of cups and mugs from people’s houses and shops — and lined them up — and got a bunch of people to walk down the line saying “this one is a cup” and “this one is a mug” — then I think we’d all agree on say 95% of them, but the classification of some would be a bit fuzzy. I’m thinking this would largely be a function of what people (parents, other family members, etc) told us when we were growing up.
Similarly, I think everyone would identify hard green and hard blue the same — but it might be that the intermediate cases get a little fuzzy. My initial reaction was that this might be due to some physiological differences — but then I thought “hang on, as far as I know, the molecular construction of the color sensing cones in everyone’s eyes is the same*” — so it may be that any perceived differences in color (insofar as classifying the colors) my be more down to what our parents told us when we were kids saying “what color is that?” (*Of course, random mutations may mean that there are physical/molecular differences in different people’s cones … so many layers to this onion…)
My blue-green result was similar to yours. But it would be interesting to compare the average female result with the average male result. Most guys’ favourite colour is blue apparently, so this may have something to do with why we both see more blue than green.
I will admit though that towards the end of the test I kept clicking green as I thought the colour was more green than blue, but I started thinking “there has to be a blue sometime, so when it got a bit bluer I clicked blue, even though I wasn’t fully convinced. It woiuld be interesting to see what happens when they present you the colours from the blue end going towards the green end…..
It would be even more interesting if they offered a bacon sandwich as a reward for taking the test (sorry, I’m feeling a little peckish at the moment).
Interesting discussion. Being somewhat of a Deutan myself I became aware of not seeing some shades of red/green/brown the same as other people. As with Clive I assumed for a long time that everyone else was deluded, until I purchased a pair of the Enchroma corrective glasses. In the case of red-green colour perception or lack of (Deutan deficiency) the cones in the retina for red and green are tend to overlap causing the brain to fail to distinguish anything other than intense red or green. These glasses have a notch filter tuned to supress the area of overlap. This allows the brain to see red and green far more distinctly, almost normal colour vision is obtained. Using these glasses was a revelation. I now see many different shades of green at a distance, and also pale reds and pinks at a distance that I previously only saw close-up. But back to the point of this thread, I can now agree with others on the colour of certain items that previously they were very wrong about!
If I might digress slightly, I wonder if Clive or anyone else knows were to get a lamp that produces brown light…
Hi Chris — thanks so much for sharing — I always wondered how those corrective glasses worked. Hmmm — a lamp that produces brown light — I have no idea — but I did find this on YouTube https://youtu.be/uTP4J3ZiIds?si=tnN1qZOKHL6fdB_M I hope it helps — Max
In other cultures, they originally had less colours, or more clearly they grouped some colours together under one name. In ancient Japan for instance they did not have green, so anything in the green spectrum was called blue.
It persists to this day to some extent. The coloured lamp at the crossroads uses the same glass filter as in USA ( or very close) yet they call this go signal ” the blue lamp we call green “. 青 is the character meaning blue and you will find in references to the “go” lamp.