Published on
Updated
Reading 3 mins.
Color perception could be affected by cultural influences, learning experiences and our mother tongue. But how much?
What we call blue, or green, does it take on the same hue according to our country of birth? The half-scientific, half-sociological question interested a professor of psychology from the University of Madrid who was able to give his lines of thought and conclusions in the review The Conversation last October 13. Data was relayed in the log Neuroscience News.
Six color names in most countries
Pedro Raúl Montoro Martínez’s reflection starts from an observation: just by opening our eyes, we are confronted with a multitude of colors that allow us to identify objects, materials in our environment. Recognizing the same colors also allows us to communicate with each other: it allows us to designate an item in a store, for example. But although the number of chromatic nuances that we can perceive is immense (more than 10 million hues), only a limited number of words are used to designate them by grouping them in the same associated category: green, red, blue or pink. , etc. English for example only has 10 color names.
The most important study on this subject was conducted in 1969 by two anthropologists, Brent Berlin and Paul Kay (1969). They studied color vocabulary in 100 languages and found that color terms were not arbitrarily distributed between languages, but followed a predictable hierarchy across cultures: if a language has only two color words , then they are black and white. If he has three, they are white, black and red. With five terms, green and yellow are added to the previous ones, etc.
In short, contrary to the hypothesis of linguistic relativity, we find a universal motif that pivots around the six basic colors proposed by the theories of chromatic perception: white, black, blue, yellow, green and red. So the way we group the colors is pretty much the same.
Color shades turn out to be cultural
The cultural difference will therefore rather nestle in the nuances. According to the scientist, for example, in English and Spanish there is a basic term for bluish colors. However, in languages such as Russian, Greek, and Turkish, there are different terms for light blue and dark blue.
The author of the article also relies on several studies that have shown that speakers of these languages are faster and more confident when it comes to differentiating between light and dark blues. Moreover, they exaggerate the differences in perception between the intermediate shades compared to speakers of English or Spanish, as if they were different colors for them. Thus each language would have several terms of nuances to name the colors, and would influence the way in which they are perceived and memorized by their speakers.
For Dr. Lucie Joly, a psychiatrist interviewed on the subject, and experienced in neuroscience, the question is fascinating, and indeed determined by the language spoken:
“Color is a spectrum so the limits are set by the words you choose. And these words are limited, compared to the chromatic tones that can exist. Depending on the country, the environment, the cultures, the limits are not the same. All of this has a lot to do with our perception.
From a neuroscientific point of view, this kind of question is fascinating: the color that is reflected on our eyes depends on many variables, making it subjective, personal. And the color thus deciphered by our brain influences our behavior.”
But if there is indeed a certain impact of the mother tongue on the processing of colors, this truth does not turn out to be immutable, according to the author of the article: anyone can in the course of their life and where they live, expand their color vocabulary and easily learn to distinguish between different shades of blue or any other color, as several studies have shown. “The flexibility of our perceptual system allows us to adapt to our environment in order to continue to benefit from the mixture of light and color.” he concludes. The color, in the end, would not really know any border.