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I reckon most of us have had the thought at least once – if I’m looking at a “red” ball, why would I think the other person looking at the same object sees the colour the same way as me?
After all, “red” is just a name we learn to call certain light frequencies. Naming the colour the same thing is no indication we “see” it the same way; it just means we’ve all been taught to refer to whatever hue we perceive with that word.
It can be hard to imagine how scientists might even begin to approach that age-old question, never mind answer it.
But recently, the researchers behind a new study published in the scientific journal PNAS have tried – and they think they’ve come up with an answer.
The researchers think we might agree more on what colours look like than you might think
The scientists had a smart idea. They decided to include children, who had less of an understanding of the names of colours, as participants.
Their study involved three-to-12-year-old and six-to-eight-year-old children. The researchers compared their perceptions of colour to that of adults’.
Every participant was asked to compare nine different colours to each other and rate how similar they are on a four-point scale from “very similar” to “very different”.
The system the researchers chose didn’t rely on words, making it suitable for the toddlers involved.
While “subtle changes” happened as people aged, the researchers found that “Contrary to traditional beliefs, results revealed a striking similarity in the structure of subjective colour experiences across ages and cultures”.
In other words, people seemed to experience colour perception in more or less the same way.
Does this prove we definitely see colour the same way?
No. That’s a tall order to begin with – this study just found that people’s scale of colour similarity was similar across ages and cultures, not that the similar colours they saw were definitely perceived in the same way.
Though that’s interesting and even promising, the researchers themselves say that more research is needed.
“Our study opens broad avenues for probing children’s subjective experiences and illuminating the universality and variability of colour experience” they write.
Until then, my late-night thoughts about whether my pink is everyone else’s pink too will continue…
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