Is it blue and black or white and gold? Twitter debates filled the Internet after one user posted a photo of a dress in his Tumblr account and asked what color other users see. Now, people are fighting over the true color of the dress. Well, the people were polarized into two groups: one group see it as white and gold while the other group sees it as blue and black.
The controversial photograph of the dress went viral via the hashtag #TheDress on Twitter which was originally posted to Tumblr and after some time, became a hot topic that got millions of people hooked from all over the world. Even celebrities joined the hot debate.
Now, why are people seeing it differently? The Week reports a statement from a colour-vision researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle and he said, "I've studied individual differences in color vision for 30 years, and this is one of the biggest individual differences I've ever seen."
Neitz explained that the way people perceive color changes throughout their lives. Some people may be sensitive to blue light when they are kids and less when they get older. Now, he explains that the blue and black dress may be seen or perceived by younger internet users while older ones may see it as white and gold. Yet, the two groups were not solely represented by any age but rather grouped randomly.
Another take was from Bevil Conway, a neuroscientist who studies color and vision at the Wellesley College, in Massachusetts. He said that people see or perceive colors contextually. This means that when you see a color in the dress and isolate it from the other colors, and then look at it against a black background, it will look differently.
Forbes, meanwhile, reports that psychologist Steven Pinker also shares an explanation about the viral photo. According to him, "It's possible that when people first see the dress photo, with its unusual lighting and material, their brains struggle to interpret the color and intensity of the illumination, lock on to one of the two possibilities, see the material of the dress in the appropriate real-world color, and thereafter have trouble seeing it in any other way."
