Color and Culture

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whitewolf

asleep under the juniper bush
Registered Senior Member
So, I was sitting at a color and light lecture again. The prof said that the way color is seen depends on age, mood, gender, culture; each individual sees color slightly differently. He said that the part of the brain responsible for color is close to that one responsible for language. (Sorry any grammar mistakes, inaccuracies, I'm in a rush to go back to class.)
My question is, why the difference in perception? What are the differences, exactly? And, of course, Links, research studies, valid sources of detailed info! I need substantial amount of information to type up a good term paper. :)
 
I've heard that colour corellates to personality, but not to language; then again, maybe the type of language one uses, corellates to their personality, mood, age, gender etc? If one's perception of things is influenced by their personality, then I can see how they might perceive colours in different ways.
 
My prof said, there was a study done in 1960 (very criticised), which said that primitive cultures have words for very few colors--like two or five--and the colors defined are usually the same ones, in spite of large distances between the two cultures.
 
It is impossible to know what colours individual people see in their heads all we can do is test to see what 'wavelengths' people can pick up on. Colour is a personal subjective thing.
 
So, John, might it be that - if you & I could somehow exchange bodies - what I perceive as red, you would consider green? That I might look at a clear sky through your eyes and think it had turned yellow?

I always used to wonder about that. Perhaps some people even see the World in the way others see photographic negatives. :m:
 
Not only 'might' but probably I believe!!! I started a thread on this way back (my first in SciForums) but God knows where it is now! I think there is no advantage in us all seeing the same colour in our heads and so evolution would not have favoured us to develop such a costly mechanism. This is the mechanism that prevents mutations every generation, from changing what an individual will see in his/her head.
 
What the hell are some of these colors that they come up with? Fuchia and mothe are a few examples of them. Who would ever know what those colors actually look like unless they have seen them and been told what they were?
 
Why would a light source of, say, wavelength 650nm be processed and translated in my brain be processed and translated any differently in your brain. We'd both be seeing red. The eye is more or less a mechanical receptor of the light which transmits the stimulus to the brain via the optic nerve making an electronic translation of it. The mechanical and electronic processes are the same in everyone. Our thoughts and perceptions are just the result of electronic impulses and chemical processes, like all battery testers would read a 6 volt battery as having 6 volts. There is a set amount being perceived by a measuring device calibrated to read that amount.

I'm not sure if that exlplanation/theory makes the question more complicated or much more simple.....
 
one of my teachers once said that science may one day be all together wrong as far as color goes: he said that maybe an object isn't red, but it REJECTS red. therefore, the actual color is anything but red.
 
The differences in color seen by individuals aren't that great. Green remains green, red remains red, etc. The color detection mechanism is very complex....

Allow me to recomend an article published a short time ago. Google the title "Quantifying Variations in Personal Color Spaces: Are There Sex Differences in Color Vision?" by David L. Bimler, John Kirkland, and Kimberly A. Jameson. The article should come up in the first few search results. Rather lengthy, to non-scientists may sound a bit monotonous, but very interesting and informative.
 
Yeah, I can see there could be differences in perception of hue or saturation. There are chemical factors involved in the brain as well, so there can be differences from person to person. But to say if I were to see through your eyes and suddenly see a blue apple is pretty far off.

The article you mention, whitewolf, may be the one someone told me about in discussion of photo lab printers....something about women seeing colors a bit differently during menses, and seeing color a bit differently from men in general.
 
If red for me looks blue for you, then reddish for me should look bluish for you, IMO. Otherwise, there would be all kinds of anomolies being noticed quite frequently, and quite fatally.
 
Who would ever know what those colors actually look like unless they have seen them and been told what they were?
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For that reason, we have world-wide-known Munsell chips and CIE chromaticity diagram. There were other models developed earlier. Munsell is most comfortable to use. These models name each color using three numbers, specifying hue, value, and chroma. Really, that color and light course is interesting.
 
We know that, regardless of the question of individual perceptions, all visible colors are made up of red, blue and green light. SInce some animals (eg. insect and birds) see with various ultraviolet frequencies, could their vision contain 4 or more primary colors? There must be hues and tones in their worlds which we can never conceive of.
 
i have a question: what happens to color recognition with the condiction called synesthesia? synesthesia is:
an involuntary joining in which the real information of one sense is accompanied by a perception in another sense. In addition to being involuntary, this additional perception is regarded by the synesthete as real, often outside the body, instead of imagined in the mind's eye. It also has some other interesting features that clearly separate it from artistic fancy or purple prose. Its reality and vividness are what make synesthesia so interesting in its violation of conventional perception. Synesthesia is also fascinating because logically it should not be a product of the human brain, where the evolutionary trend has been for increasing separation of function anatomically.
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here's a website on further information if you're not familiar with it: http://web.mit.edu/synesthesia/www/synesthesia.html

so my question again: since synesthesia is a perceptional condition, do people with it perceive colors differently when given a certain stimulus?

this may seem off topic a bit, but it's still about perceptions. :)
 
chunkylover58 said:
Why would a light source of, say, wavelength 650nm be processed and translated in my brain be processed and translated any differently in your brain. We'd both be seeing red.
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No we would both be seeing 650 nm which might be called red by societal standards.
There are a variety of reasons why they might be translated differently but why would they be translated the same? Far more costly.
 
errandir said:
If red for me looks blue for you, then reddish for me should look bluish for you, IMO. Otherwise, there would be all kinds of anomolies being noticed quite frequently, and quite fatally.
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I don't understand quite what u are saying here. If its what I think then u are right. I don't think its adaptive to have a completely different machanism of translation/interpretation so that two wavelengths which are very alike would look completely different! As u say this could indeed be fatal. I don't think anyone is suggesting this though...are they???
 
John Connellan said:
I don't think anyone is suggesting this though...are they???
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Someone mentioned perceiveing red as green. That notion seemed a little far-out, so I just thought I would give it more context. Incidently, I should have used green instead of blue to make my post more relevant, both regarding the seed post, and the fatality issue.
 
No there is no problem with 'perceiving' red as green as long as we both agree on what 'perceive' means. What do u mean???
 
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