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According to a recent research project, we see different colors in the four different seasons, all because of how each season’s color pallet affects our eyes.
The study was conducted by the Department of Psychology from York University and it involved an experiment meant to verify if there truly is a difference in how we interpret colors in the different seasons.
The team of researchers started out from the idea that people have pretty much the same perception of the color yellow. And since absolute yellow looks the same to everybody, the scientists asked their 67 subjects to point out the moment when a colored light reached the point of absolute yellow, without any influences from other colors, such as green or red.
And in order to see the difference between seasons, the 67 subjects were first tested in January and then again in June. The researchers explained that there is a very large difference between British winters, that are dominated by an extremely wide gray pattern, several shades of blue and the inevitable white, whereas summers are completely and utterly dominated by a rich pallet of greens, because nature blossoms everywhere in that time of the year.
Therefore, it seems that the colors around us influence our perception of different shades of colors, mush like modifying the hue in a picture or on a TV screen. In winter out vision is dominated by colder shades, that have a blue influence, whereas in summer, where out sight is flooded by green, we see a different version of the colors before us. The reference color used in the study was yellow.
“What we are finding is that between seasons our vision adapts to changes in environment”, says the lead author of the study, Lauren Welbourne.
This is the first study of its kind and the researchers point out that it should be followed by similar studies in the near future, so that we might get a better understanding of how we all see the world around us. And since colors play an extremely important part in this perception, the more we know about them, the better we can understand it.
The authors also point out that despite the fact that there is no actual medical use for this data, it provides valuable information on our perception of the world.
Image Source: hirespixel
