“Striking Individual Differences in Color Perception Uncovered by ‘the Dress’ Photograph”, 2015 (; similar):
‘The dress’ is a peculiar photograph: by themselves the dress’ pixels are brown and blue, colors associated with natural illuminants, but popular accounts (#TheDress) suggest the dress appears either white/gold or blue/black. Could the purported categorical perception arise because the original social-media question was an alternative-forced-choice?
In a free-response survey (n = 1,401), we found that:
most people, including those naïve to the image, reported white/gold or blue/black, but some said blue/brown. Reports of white/gold over blue/black were higher among older people and women. On re-test, some subjects reported a switch in perception, showing the image can be multi-stable. In a language-independent measure of perception, we asked subjects to identify the dress’ colors from a complete color gamut. The results showed 3 peaks corresponding to the main descriptive categories, providing additional evidence that the brain resolves the image into one of 3 stable percepts.
We hypothesize that these reflect different internal priors: some people favor a cool illuminant (blue sky), discount shorter wavelengths, and perceive white/gold; others favor a warm illuminant (incandescent light), discount longer wavelengths, and see blue/black. The remaining subjects may assume a neutral illuminant, and see blue/brown.
We show that by introducing overt cues to the illumination, we can flip the dress color.