By Hannah Lynch
Opinions Reporter
“White and gold!”
“No! It’s blue and black!”
You probably heard these shrill screeches in the cafeteria, hallways, and even classrooms of school this past Friday.
The CNBC article “The Dress that Broke the Internet” explains that the frenzy started with a photo posted on Tumblr with the heading “What colors are this dress?” CNBC satirically recounts “spawning arguments, memes and half-baked pseudo-scientific explanations over the viral frock’s real colors” erupting on Friday.
Buzzfeed’s news director, Jon Passatino, tweeted that #TheDress even shattered Buzzfeed’s traffic records; over 670,000 people viewed the dress post at the same time.
Along with inducing a pretty heated debate on social media networks, #TheDress sparked a rapidly spreading social phenomenon of social turbulence and madness.
Due to our differences in visual perception, the dress appears to be different colors to different people. So despite the simplicity of the question, “What colors are this dress?” — many were left feeling confused.
According to ASAP Science, the theory of color constancy explains that our brains depend on the context of an object in an image. Those who see the dress as white and gold, for example, see a shadow in the image, and their brains attempt to correct the image by compensating.
But the real issue isn’t the dress’ colors, which are actually blue and black. Our proneness to turn against one another, coupled with our susceptibility to paranoia due to our insecurity with the ambiguity of a seemingly simple question, is alarming.
Along with our brains subconsciously perceiving colors of the image, our society was subconsciously affected by this controversy.
I, one of the many who saw white and gold, felt like I was going crazy when the dress was confirmed to be blue and black. After my friends who saw the dress as blue and black screamed, taunted, and ridiculed those of us who saw white and gold, I realized that something was wrong.
Unsettled, I naturally clung to those who perceived the dress in the same way as I did. It was apparent in school that students had banded together with the rest of their #WhiteAndGold or #BlueAndBlack team.
Other social phenomena in controlled experiments present similar patterns of psychology and behavior.
For example, commonly referred to as the “Lord of the Flies Experiment,” the Robber’s Cave Experiment probed the origins of identification in social situations.
Two groups of children were separated at a summer camp, and the group members of each respective clan quickly bonded and began to identify with their peers. After several weeks, the groups were combined, and members from both clans aggressively antagonized members of the other group.
Just as the boys quickly bonded with their fellow campers, I observed complete strangers uniting over a common opinion about the color of #TheDress. Unfortunately, striking similarities can also be found in the aggressive antagonism of the campers and that of students with opposing perspectives.
Furthermore, the Asch experiment, in which college students participated in a social experiment disguised as a vision test, documented the corrupting effects of peer pressure. Actors disguised as fellow participants lied about the clear results of a vision test.
In about 75% of the trials, the naive subject of the experiment betrayed his/her true perception of the vision test and conformed with the majority’s common, and incorrect, response.
When interviewed after the experiment, participants explained that they conformed to the group out of fear of rejection.
So, as the frenzy of confusion about the colors of the dress dies down, think back on how you and your peers subconsciously reacted to this probing, fast spreading, but short lived controversy.
While it’s supportive for individuals to find a group of similar perspective, the opposite reaction is socially detrimental. No matter how seemingly insignificant, any controversial question can drive us to alienate our friends in an attempt to clarify confusion.
