By Kylie
Yes, we’ve all seen it – The dress that sparked the
icebreaker for the day “black and blue? Or white and gold?” At first, I thought
it was just another day of the Internet trolling. #teamwhiteandgold
It’s blue. Turns out, the dress is really black and blue.
But some people would rather rip their arm off than accept this.
So, WHY? WHAT IS HAPPENING?
It all has to do with perception of colours in daylight. More
specifically –
COLOUR CONSTANCY
(Brain’s assumption
under different lighting)
Let’s first look at the example below. Squares A and B are
the same colour. This is because our brain sees that square B is overcast with
the shadow of the cylinder, and tries to compensate for it by perceiving it as
it’s “true colour”, hence it interprets the square as lighter than it appears. There is also a second reason:
- Darker elements surround square B, hence our brain perceives it as lighter.
- Lighter elements surround square A, hence our brain perceives it as darker.
In a way, our brain it logical – it sees what it expects to
see.
 |
| Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checker_shadow_illusion#/media/File:Grey_square_optical_illusion.PNG) |
Back to the dress. Usually we would see a larger field of
view, so what we see would be influenced by how surrounding objects are illuminated.
The reason why it’s so confusing is because the environment is ambiguous (not
much seen in the photo but the dress). This means that out brain has to make
assumptions –
 |
| Very dress. Much blue. Source: (http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2015/03/17/4197384.htm) |
If you see white and gold, chances are your brain is
interpreting the dress under natural light that is more blue-ish. Hence the
white would look blue, but our brain interprets it as white because of COLOUR
CONSTANCY. This means – your brain would ignore blue hues (try to show it’s “true
colour”)
If you see black and blue, may be interpreting the dress
indoors under yellow lights. The brain would interpret the gold as a reflection
off the black elements, with the blue being unaffected.
Although almost maddening, this optical illusion proved to great
example of how easily our eyes can be deceived.
Source:
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