A change in season can affect how we perceive colors due to varying cone sensitivity and activation in response to ambient colors. Image Source: Unsplash user Lukasz Szmigiel
By now, the subjective nature of color perception is well-known. Biological, cultural, and contextual factors combine to produces variation in our assessments, experiences, and descriptions of chromatic information. Research shows that even fleeting mood variations can impact our ability to distinguish between particular colors.1 However, there is one color whose perception has been considered remarkably stable across viewers and cultures: yellow. While humans can see red, yellow, green, and blue as discrete colors free from other hues, the specific wavelengths at which people identify unique red, green, and blue vary. The wavelength of unique yellow, however, remains particularly constant across populations. A recent attempt to better understand this phenomenon revealed a new and unexpected source of perceptive variation.
Yellow appears to have unique optical qualities that make perception unusually stable across populations. Image Source: Unsplash user Eric Saunders