Science
Related: About this forumHumans Are Better Able To Describe Warm Colors Than Cool Colors
By Josh Davis
20 SEP 2017, 11:55
Even though the sky may obviously be blue to us, this is not an objective fact. In many cultures around the world, the labeling of different hues is more subjective than we might be inclined to think. New research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, seems to back up the notion that our perception of color is far more to do with culture than biology.
By asking 40 members of the Tsimane tribe, who live in a remote part of the Bolivian Amazon and have developed language separately from surrounding groups, researchers were able to assess which colors have more words. These colors were more distinct to the tribe. They found that consistently with speakers of at least 100 other languages, the Tsimane could distinguish well between black, white, and red hues, but unlike us, not the greens and blues.
When we look at it, it turns out its the same across every language that we studied, explained lead author Edward Gibson. Every language has this amazing similar ordering of colors, so that reds are more consistently communicated than greens or blues.
Most of us see the same color when we look at objects regardless of where we are from, but it is the information we need that varies from culture to culture. The Tsimane simply dont need to describe as many colors as we do, and when they do it tends to be those on the warmer side of the color spectrum.
More:
http://www.iflscience.com/brain/humans-are-better-able-to-describe-warm-colors-than-cool-colors/
Warpy
(111,277 posts)and anyone who works with color has so many different descriptors for it. I do know that cultures that lack a word for orange can't distinguish it from either red or yellow, so language does affect perception.
NNadir
(33,526 posts)He was incredibly stressed all the time.
He got an A, but he worked like the devil. It was a very, very, very challenging course.
Rollo
(2,559 posts)Since living matter with warm color tends to be more energy and nutrition rich than cool colored life. Examples could include ripe fruit, where red is often an indication of ripeness, and game, where blood is obviously red hued.
There is however no indication in the article of an innate inability of the human brain to distinguish between cool hues as well as between cool hues. That would probably take some lab testing.
In my own life, I remember as a child first being attracted to the color red. My brother, who is three and a half years older, was more attracted to blues and greens. It went so far as him declaring that my color was red, and his was blue/green, and that I was not allowed to select items (clothing, toothbrushes, etc) of those cool hues. When I got older I started to prefer the blues and greens, over his strenuous objections (yeah, he was sort of an ass about it). His insistence on what he wanted my color preference to be persisted into adult life, if you can believe that. In any case, I only mention this because color preferences can be dependent upon developmental factors, which in turn may be an evolutionary adaptation. Oh, and to illustrate how silly siblings can be .