By Andrea Fernandes
Features Editor
A recent debate on social media has torn families apart, ruined friendships and destroyed relationships. The debate was over a black-and-blue or white-and-gold dress.
It all started when Caitlin McNeill, 21, posted a picture of a dress on Tumblr asking what color it is. The picture of the dress soon flooded almost every social media outlet, including Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Tumblr. Various news networks such as CNN, FOX and CBS discussed the debate on air and spoke with the designer of the dress. The big question: Is the dress blue and black or is it gold and white? And why aren’t people seeing the same color? The answer: science.
According to a vote on Buzzfeed, 72 percent of people saw white and gold and 28 percent saw blue and black. Even celebrities took part in the debate. Actress and singer Anna Kendrick tweeted, “If that’s not white and gold, the universe is falling apart.” Kim Kardashian West tweeted that she sees white and gold, but husband Kanye West sees black and blue and asked which one of them is colorblind. Sorry Kim, but Kanye won this round.
“I thought it was cool that everyone was talking about it,” Andrew Wright, a freshman accounting and finance major, said. “It’s annoying that some people see white and gold, and all I keep seeing is blue and black.”
Althea Bauernschmidt, a Bonaventure psychology professor, said one thing that may help explain why different people see different colors is color constancy. According to Bauernschmidt, color constancy is the process that strives for consistency in one’s perception of colors.
“We know that an apple is red,” Bauernschmidt said. “If we see the apple in dim light, we still see red because our brain knows an apple to be red.”
In the case of the ambiguous dress picture, people see the dress, and their brains make an assumption on the lighting of where the picture was taken in order to assume the dress color.
“People are assuming different lighting conditions which make us see different colors,” Bauernschmidt said.
There is variability in how an individual’s visual perception works, which explains why everyone couldn’t all see black and blue or white and gold. Bauernschmidt added that perception does not always line up with reality.
“A lot of what we see is our brain making assumptions of what we’re looking at,” Bauernschmidt said. “The dress is basically on optical illusion based on the terrible lighting situation.”
For those still debating about the color of the dress, science and the dress designer have proven that it is indeed blue and black.
fernanal13@bonaventure.edu
