There is no blue without yellow and without orange.
Those words of wisdom brought to you by Herr Vincent Van Gogh. But what’s he saying?
Vincent was a man who understood color, as all good artists must. He’s pointing out something that’s not very well known to the average Joe – namely that how a color impacts the eye depends not only on the color itself but also on the other colors that populate the work. Colors can appear very, very different depending on what occurs alongside them.
In fact, the effect goes beyond color perception and impacts the very way in which we "see" images. Studies into perception have shown that what we see and how we view a picture can depend not just on how good our eyes are but on where we were raised. Westerners (as in the US and Western Europe) see what’s in front of them very differently than those raised in an Eastern culture (as in China, Japan, …). It turns out that the Westerners seek out foreground objects. This isn’t a conscious thing, mind you, it’s all operating behind the scenes and only becomes obvious when someone does some well controlled studies. Luckily, psychology researchers love doing just that – hence the data. So, show a Westerner a forest with some cars in it and he’ll look at the cars.
Show the same scene to an Easterner and, in contrast to those brought up with Western modes of thought, he’ll attach a much greater importance to the background. If you want to be simplistic about it you could say that Westerners see specifics while Easterners see the big picture.
There’s no better or worse here – just a fascinating aspect – again – of how our brains work to interpret the "real world." Based on these studies, it’s clear that a witness to a particular event will have a different remembrance and conclusion simply based on whether she’s had a Western or Eastern upbringing. Pretty fascinating. There exist quite a few links to these studies but here’s just one if you’re interested in reading further: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4173956.stm
- And that’s today’s word from the bird
