Color Judgments of #The Dress and #The Jacket in a Sample of Different Cultures.

Two viral photographs, #The Dress and #The Jacket, have received recent attention in research on perception as the colors in these photos are ambiguous. In the current study, we examined perception of these photographs across three different cultural samples: Sweden (Western culture), China (Eastern culture), and India (between Western and Eastern cultures). Participants also answered questions about gender, age, morningness, and previous experience of the photographs. Analyses revealed that only age was a significant predictor for the perception of The Dress, as older people were more likely to perceive the colors as blue and black than white and gold. In contrast, multiple factors predicted perception of The Jacket, including age, previous experience, and country. Consistent with some previous research, this suggests that the perception of The Jacket is a different phenomenon from perception of The Dress and is influenced by additional factors, most notably culture.

Universal Patterns in Color-Emotion Associations Are Further Shaped by Linguistic and Geographic Proximity.

Many of us "see red," "feel blue," or "turn green with envy." Are such color-emotion associations fundamental to our shared cognitive architecture, or are they cultural creations learned through our languages and traditions? To answer these questions, we tested emotional associations of colors in 4,598 participants from 30 nations speaking 22 native languages. Participants associated 20 emotion concepts with 12 color terms. Pattern-similarity analyses revealed universal color-emotion associations (average similarity coefficient r = .88). However, local differences were also apparent. A machine-learning algorithm revealed that nation predicted color-emotion associations above and beyond those observed universally. Similarity was greater when nations were linguistically or geographically close. This study highlights robust universal color-emotion associations, further modulated by linguistic and geographic factors. These results pose further theoretical and empirical questions about the affective properties of color and may inform practice in applied domains, such as well-being and design.

Cultural Differences in Answerability Judgments.

Judgments about whether anyone can provide a relevant and correct answer to a question are called answerability judgments. Such judgements can be important in societal planning and decision making and may vary in different cultural contexts. Six hundred participants in each of China, India, and Sweden made answerability judgments of six difficult knowledge questions. For each question, they choose between three options indicating that they thought the question was answerable and a fourth option: "Nobody can answer that question." After each question, they rated their confidence that their judgment was correct. Choosing "Nobody can answer that question" was significantly more common for the Swedes and was uncommon in the Asian samples. The Asian samples showed higher confidence in their judgments. We suggest that these differences may be explained by results from cross-cultural research, but this study did not investigate specific mechanisms. Hence, more research is needed.

What Is the Correct Answer about The Dress' Colors? Investigating the Relation between Optimism, Previous Experience, and Answerability.

The Dress photograph, first displayed on the internet in 2015, revealed stunning individual differences in color perception. The aim of this study was to investigate if lay-persons believed that the question about The Dress colors was answerable. Past research has found that optimism is related to judgments of how answerable knowledge questions with controversial answers are (Karlsson et al., 2016). Furthermore, familiarity with a question can create a feeling of knowing the answer (Reder and Ritter, 1992). Building on these findings, 186 participants saw the photo of The Dress and were asked about the correct answer to the question about The Dress' colors ("blue and black," "white and gold," "other, namely…," or "there is no correct answer"). Choice of the alternative "there is no correct answer" was interpreted as believing the question was not answerable. This answer was chosen more often by optimists and by people who reported they had not seen The Dress before. We also found that among participants who had seen The Dress photo before, 19%, perceived The Dress as "white and gold" but believed that the correct answer was "blue and black." This, in analogy to previous findings about non-believed memories (Scoboria and Pascal, 2016), shows that people sometimes do not believe the colors they have perceived are correct. Our results suggest that individual differences related to optimism and previous experience may contribute to if the judgment of the individual perception of a photograph is enough to serve as a decision basis for valid conclusions about colors. Further research about color judgments under ambiguous circumstances could benefit from separating individual perceptual experience from beliefs about the correct answer to the color question. Including the option "there is no correct answer" may also be beneficial.

Does Anyone Know the Answer to that Question? Individual Differences in Judging Answerability.

Occasionally people may attempt to judge whether a question can be answered today, or if not, if it can be answered in the future. For example, a person may consider whether enough is known about the dangers of living close to a nuclear plant, or to a major electricity cable, for them to be willing to do so, and state-authorities may consider whether questions about the dangers of new technologies have been answered, or in a reasonable future can be, for them to be willing to invest money in research aiming develop such technologies. A total of 476 participants, for each of 22 knowledge questions, either judged whether it was answerable today (current answerability), or judged when it could be answered (future answerability). The knowledge questions varied with respect to the expected consensus concerning their answerability: consensus questions (high expected consensus), non-consensus questions (lower expected consensus), and illusion questions (formulated to appear answerable, but with crucial information absent). The questions' judged answerability level on the two scales was highly correlated. For both scales, consensus questions were rated more answerable than the non-consensus questions, with illusion questions falling in-between. The result for the illusion questions indicates that a feeling of answerability can be created even when it is unlikely that somebody can come up with an answer. The results also showed that individual difference variables influenced the answerability judgments. Higher levels of belief in certainty of knowledge, mankind's knowledge, and mankind's efficacy were related to judging the non-consensus questions as more answerable. Participants rating the illusion questions as answerable rated the other answerability questions as more, or equally, answerable compared to the other participants and showed tendencies to prefer a combination of more epistemic default processing and less intellectual processing.