We tend to think that what we have a pretty firm grasp on the world around us and that what we see is what we get. When we look outside, we don’t think of the world as a projection or an interpretation of sensations—we just think of it as unfiltered reality, right? Unfortunately, that’s wrong. Our brains are very powerful interpreters and processors of data around us, but even our brains can make mistakes.
For proof of this, just consider these three optical illusions!
When you look at the picture above, what do you see?
If you have a well-adjusted and “normal” visual system, you likely see alternating purple and yellow hearts on a green background. But what if we told you that the purple and yellow hearts were actually just one color—purple? Don’t believe us? Unfortunately, it’s true.
If you take away the colored stripes, it immediately becomes clear that this is the case.
You may be wondering how this is possible. To understand, let’s take a closer look at the pictures.
The illusion is that the striped color bars in and around the hearts are not actually the same color!
The ones around the heart on the left make it seem all the more purple, whereas the ones on the right give the heart a much more yellow appearance. Though the left picture has blue bars through the heart and the left has green bars through it, both hearts are actually just purple. The truth is, we actually perceive color as a result of an object’s color and it’s surrounding color, rather than just the object’s color! Pretty tricky, right?
Another famous one is the “flash-lag” effect.
In this illusion, a line sweeps around the screen. Every so often, other segments of the line will “flash” on the outer edge, completing the line. When we look at the effect, however, it appears that the flashing lines are “lagging” behind the sweeping one. In reality, though, they are perfectly in line!
As it turns out, this one is more intuitive.
The answer to this illusion is that our sense of sight is always giving us an image of the slight past. The reason for this is because it takes time for light to hit our eye and then get processed and interpreted. By the time we’ve done it, even if it’s incredibly fast, the present moment has changed ever so slightly. We are destined to be behind!
Finally, take a look at this image for about 20 seconds while focusing only on that central black dot—then scroll down!
Does this image look like it’s in color? It’s actually black and white.
How does this one work? In this case, our eyes have colors processors called cones that sometimes can get tired if they over-focus on one color. As a result, throwing in a new image causes the cones that aren’t working to momentarily fill in the gaps. And just like that, voila! We see colors that aren’t there. So, do you still trust your sense of the world around you?
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