Colours: Do we really all see them the same?

Given this is not related to geology or the Earth sciences and not my usual type of content I'm asking you to bear with me for a minute....

When scrolling on instagram, as one does, I came across news of a new study done by researchers at the University of Tokyo and Monash University in Australia, and immediately I knew I had to write about it. It was tackling the classic 'is your red my red?' question. This particular question is one I remember asking my year 8 physics teacher, one that I'm sure he had been asked by countless other students before (sorry Mr Temple). It has long seemed to scientists that this whole 'do we all see colours the same' is a bit of a philosophical rather than empirically scientific question so it's very exciting that researchers have finally found a way to tackle it.

This awfully 2016 photo I had to include as it was taken in said year 8 physics lesson about colours that I began to thing about this question.

It's been a good 8 years since I first asked that question and although I would like to think my general understanding of science has evolved, I am still baffled by the subject, so reading the paper on this study was fascinating, and I thought I would share it on here for other geologist out there who, like me, enjoy occasionally dipping their toes into other scientific fields (if you want to read the paper yourself I've linked it here).

So; for what I.could gather from the paper the researchers used a new experimental approach to look at how individuals essentially 'experience' a colour and try to map similarities of the 'experience' of each colour between individuals. Both colour-neurotypical and colour-blind participants took part in the study in order to study differences in how the two groups experience colours. Another cool thing about the study compared to ones in the past was that they used 93 different colours, which is way more than have been used before. Based on this large data set they were able to analyse reports of subjective similarities between people's perceptions of the different colours. This method is broadly applicable to other senses so there is potential for some exciting future research to be done in a similar way.

The results showed that the experience of colours by colour-neurotypical people (e.g. how red relates to pink or how blue relates to green) was consistent. Quoting from the paper, 'color-neurotypical people’s “red” is relationally equivalent to other color-neurotypical’s “red”'. However, the results between colour-neurotypical and colour-blind participants could not be aligned, indicating that colour blind and colour-neurotypical people do in fact see the world differently.

While the results may not seem that exciting to someone who is less invested in the question as I am - yes we all see the same red, big deal? - its a big step towards answering questions that were once thought unable to be dealt with by science. That in itself is a very exciting thing! I find there is something about exploring scientific fields and questions beyond my area of expertise - rocks! - that draws me in. It's somewhat humbling to realise that your own knowledge of science and the world around us is actually very small indeed and so cool to share in research done in areas you have never even heard of before. I like that I can share my findings on here (but don't worry we'll be back to Earth Science content soon)!

Interested to know more?

In the same vein of research there has also been another scientific paper discussing colours and our perception of them in the media recently. This one presents findings of a whole new colour - discovered by stimulating specific cells in the stigma of the eye. The colour had never been seen before by humans. This is again very cool, I'm not going to get into the specifics here but there are numerous articles out there that do including this one by the BBC.