Questions tagged [color]

For questions regarding the underpinnings of the perception of color by the brain.

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Do humans see rates of change of colour

On a computer, we measure colour numerically, as three values, say red, green, blue. While our eyes include detectors for red, green and blue (although these aren't exactly the same as the light ...
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40 views

Do people prefer simple colours?

To start off with, I am not a psychologist, nor do I know very much about it beyond behavioural economics. A long time ago I decided to find my exact favourite colour. I knew it would be a yellow, so ...
9 votes
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872 views

Is the symbolic meaning of dark/black and light/white innate in humans?

Dark/black and light/white have symbolic meanings(1, 2). Dark/black represents, among others: Grief, evil, mystery (often with hidden threats), lack of knowledge, etc. Light/white represtents, among ...
4 votes
1 answer
259 views

How is 'purple' both ligt at one wavelength and the sum of light at two different wavelengths?

I see purple, violet, magenta, etc. as very similar shades and don't understand why. Consulting color wavelength charts like we see that purple (or violet) is about 400 nm. Consulting color mixing ...
3 votes
2 answers
136 views

Why is deltaE not used as a measure of error?

I've recently read a few articles pertaining to visual memory. Most of them (e.g. Bays et al., 2009 use the continuous color recall task where they ask participants to recall the color of an object by ...
11 votes
1 answer
4k views

Why people choose "boring" colors for new cars?

I've been interested in this question for a few years, sorry if this is not the right place to ask it. As I've been driving around the US for the last few years, I noticed that some community parking ...
1 vote
1 answer
70 views

Does our conscious experience of world match the world as it IS or as it presents itself?

Steven Pinker in his book 'How the mind works' says: our conscious sensation of color and lightness matches the world as it is rather than the world as it presents itself to the eye. The snowball is ...
2 votes
1 answer
131 views

What scientific evidence is there for the definable real world quality of redness independent our perception?

'With light poise and counter-poise, Nature oscillates within prescribed limits. Yet thus all arise the varieties and conditions of the phenomena which are present to us in space and time.' - Goethe ...
-1 votes
1 answer
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Are there contemporary buildings that have been designed based on colour psychology?

I am writing my thesis on how environmental psychology has influenced architecture and i am focusing on colour. I am looking for buildings that have been designed based on how colour affects the human ...
9 votes
1 answer
110 views

Source for turning cone cell opponent process diagram into equations

There is a diagram on wikipedia that is part of the article on the opponent process. I assume practical equations have been developed, at least reasonable approximations, but they appear to be missing ...
1 vote
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48 views

Effects of Red vs. Green ambient lighting on sleep

I would like to know if there has been study on the difference of effect of red vs green ambient light on human sleep. This is specifically in the interest of choosing between red or green alarm clock ...
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1 answer
320 views

Equalize/balance brightness and saturation of different colors using RGB (across various monitors)

We want to present different colors to participants in an online experiment (in an HTML/CSS-based application, hence we'll use RGB values). More in specific, we ...
1 vote
1 answer
38 views

Neurologic coherence between numbers and colors?

I came across a magic trick on YouTube that made me curious (starting from 10m15s). Maybe it has something to do with synesthesia? But let me first describe the trick in short. It involves two ...
3 votes
2 answers
136 views

Are there any definitions of the perception & JND of the colour of light approximately like how the Weber Law defines it for the brightness of light?

As I understand it, the greater light levels are the more we require in order to detect a difference. I've also read this holds true for colour saturation. However, I can't seem to find any ...
1 vote
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Correlations between symbol color, viewer response and viewer mood

Consider the image shown below Are there any studies that look at how the viewer's response to such images - simple monocolor outline symbols - varies depending on their mood. For instance Tense ...
1 vote
1 answer
136 views

Why does "bulk" yellow ink look red? [closed]

A transparent blue inkjet cartridge looks deep blue, a red one looks deep red, but a yellow one looks red. Tea also looks yellowish when it's shallow and reddish otherwise. Red is another colour, a ...
33 votes
3 answers
4k views

What color is this dress? -- And why do some see it as white and gold and others see it as black and blue?

Here's the dress (and keep reading, this is actually a serious question): This question about this image has apparently become quite a rapidly spreading meme on the internet. And after conducting my ...
1 vote
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132 views

Why some people can't see color in memory or dreams

Some of my friends told me they never see color in memory or dreams, is this some kind of symptom? Does it have a name in psychology? I did some search on internet, but seems most pages did not ...
1 vote
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64 views

What is the "perceptually correct" range or map of negative (inverted) colors?

When using software to invert the colors of a picture or screen, the software just blindly (literally) uses a mathematical formula to calculate the inverted color of each pixel. For example, in RGB, ...
8 votes
2 answers
997 views

What effect does the colour of an "Open" sign have on people's behavior?

I am in the process of designing a nice OPEN sign, and I noticed that the vast majority of them are red. This seems bizarre to me, yet green open signs look odd. I just wondered if anybody knew why ...
3 votes
1 answer
125 views

How do we know what colors animals perceive?

Humans have three kinds of photoreceptors corresponding to different wavelength-spectra: If say photons with wavelengths of around 530 nanometers hit the human retina, this would lead to the ...
3 votes
1 answer
263 views

Is Paul's Churchland claim about qualia supported by science?

Knowledge argument: Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes ...
1 vote
1 answer
72 views

Is synesthesia tied to experience?

For example, do color blind people only able to perceive experienced colors through synesthesia? E.g. if a person both has synesthesia (like grapheme-color synesthesia or chromesthesia) and some kind ...
4 votes
2 answers
103 views

Importance of colors in learning process?

I am starting a graduating project that is an interactive software for learning programming with an animated interface. To be more specific, it's a software that should help students learning how to ...
8 votes
1 answer
341 views

Why do colors affect emotion?

The paper "Color Psychology: Effects of Perceiving Color on Psychological Functioning in Humans" by Andrew J. Elliot and Markus A. Maier shows color effects emotion, but what property of them cause ...
3 votes
1 answer
4k views

Can color blindness be treated with image filtering technology?

Using image color-filtering techniques we can simulate the way colorblind people see: The aim of this question is to know whether the opposite process could be possible, namely can a colorblind ...
1 vote
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Is fear of darker skinned people a shared psychological maladaptation brought on by subconscious childhood Achluophobia?

Let me be clear that my intentions here are peaceful in light of recent race relation issues in the United States; I want to bring this issue to the forefront, because fear of dark skinned people is ...
1 vote
1 answer
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Does color constancy overestimate?

Consider I have a few references from white to yellowish, and I look at them in 2 different lights: a cool-coloured light (white/~6500k) and a warm-coloured light (yellow/~3500k). Firstly, intuitively,...
3 votes
3 answers
211 views

Acoustic and light wave coherency?

I know how some music notes combinations sound pleasing, yet others do not. Does the same occur with different frequencies of light (colors)? Since spectral color and acoustic pitch are both defined ...
1 vote
1 answer
75 views

psychologically , which color for which lesson?

Imagine I have an educational website which hosts high school students and presents lessons like chemistry, physics, mathematics, etc. Now I want to give each one of my lessons a unique color. I ...
6 votes
1 answer
608 views

12 percent of our dreams are in black and white?

Pavan Teja says on Psychtronics: Did you know that ... 12 percent of our dreams are in black and white? Is this true? EDIT The 12% even split up between young and old. From "Do we only dream in ...
1 vote
0 answers
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How do I convert RGB indexes under luminance condition L (from photometry) to a perceptually scaled equivalent (e.g. CIECAM02)? [closed]

I would like to determine the similarity of a set of RGB colors that are displayed on a monitor using CIECAM02 (or CIEDE2000). I have access to a photometer. How do I go about this? The goal is ...
4 votes
1 answer
734 views

Quantifying chromatic adaptations made by the brain

What are the ways one can use to measure the kind of adaptations done by the brain to provide colour constancy? Has this been done before?
10 votes
1 answer
5k views

Are there gender differences in color discrimination ability?

There appears to be a prevalent stereotype that girls seem to have "heightened" color perception. By this term, I mean that they can identify the salient features of different shades of color. However,...
2 votes
1 answer
412 views

Is there an explanation of why some colors seem to move forward/backward on a 2D plane?

I am a painter and digital artist working with color and colorimetry. Recently I noticed HUGE "illusions" (impressions of depths) in a print composed of very saturated colors, that I programmed to ...
8 votes
1 answer
340 views

Has the inverted spectrum thought experiment ever been conducted (and if not, why)?

The inverted spectrum thought experiment posits that you (the subject) wake up one morning to find that your colour spectrum (or some part of it anyway) has inverted. This experiment has important ...
4 votes
0 answers
105 views

Do people perceive opacity of a color linearly?

I am trying to create a visualization for some numbers, each ranging from 0 to 1. I was thinking of representing each number by a color (say red) of a certain opacity corresponding to its value. For ...
8 votes
3 answers
2k views

Are colors real?

We know that we distinguish colors when they fall on our photo receptors in our eyes and neurons pass its signals to our brain to recognise them as the specific colors. How accurate is it? For ...
9 votes
1 answer
7k views

What is the psychological effect of wearing black clothes?

Background: I read that black is usually favored by people who are dominant. I read that the black color projects dominance, and also hides the person's feelings. Police, for example, adopt black as a ...
6 votes
1 answer
629 views

Binaural Beats meets Sound-Color-Synesthesia

Binaural beats, the perception of which arises in the brain for specific physical stimuli. ... The effect on the brainwaves depends on the difference in frequencies of each tone: for example, if 300 ...
2 votes
3 answers
243 views

Why clothes' color is different than it appeared in stores?

This is my first time askin on Cog Sci board, not sure this is a right place to ask but I think it's something relates to Psychology and Cognitive Science. So yesterday I bought a shirt that looked ...
5 votes
0 answers
264 views

The accuracy & malleability of memory for color

How accurate is colour memory for the standard person? It would seem most people are quite good at remembering the colour of objects by visualising the object. But in some cases peoples visualisation ...
12 votes
1 answer
1k views

How do the blind dream?

Lately, a friend of mine has been telling me that he's been having recurring dreams involving a certain rabbi, who died around a hundred years ago. Since there's been some controversy surrounding the ...
7 votes
0 answers
660 views

Has there been a neuroscientific explanation of the color phi phenomenon?

The color phi phenomenon is a perceptual illusion in the visual domain which was demonstrated in an experiment by Kolers and von Grunau (1976). The experiment is as follows. A sequence of coloured (...
3 votes
1 answer
234 views

What is the optimal combination of text and background color for EEG experiments?

Most studies that I know of use yellow text on blue background (though with different hues). This choice is mostly motivated by tradition ("We always did it like that. Never touch a running system")....
9 votes
2 answers
504 views

How does syntax highlighting affect the learning of a new programming language?

What impact does syntax highlighting have on students' progress in learning a new programming language? I'm looking for studies along the lines of the following hypothetical experiment, which ...
6 votes
2 answers
5k views

Sensitivity of human eye to luminance

I heard once that the human eye has a logarithmic scale for luminance, e.g. to "feel" that a surface is three times as luminous compared to another, the former emits a light 8 times more powerful than ...
4 votes
1 answer
138 views

What would be the result if a color-sound synesthete were to go color blind due to diabetes?

Color blindness may be caused by diabetes. Would a color-sound synesthete lose her/his ability to hear two different tones when he/she is watching, let's say, magnets: ?
8 votes
2 answers
257 views

What is the name of a test presenting words in different colors?

What's the name of this psychological test where you. Read and pronounce words in three colors (red, blue, green). - Words and colors match. - Say word and color (which are the same). As above - ...
3 votes
1 answer
4k views

Why do "cool" colors, which are actually warmer, look cool, and vice versa?

Why do cool colors look cool that are in fact warmer, and why do warm colors look warm when they are actually cooler? Blue wavelength has higher energy than red, i.e, blue flame is hotter than red ...