Color Perception Essay

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Color seems like a unique topic that researchers have been examining for quite some time. Various people have claimed that how we perceive color is the same universally and cross-culturally. We essentially see what is visible to our human eyes through a very small chunk of what is known as the electromagnetic spectrum. Although people with normal sight perceive this visible section of colors the same way, there is more contemporary research which points out that the way we categorize and think about color is more complex then it is made out to be. In this paper, I aim to discuss how there is support regarding how different cultures and languages do affect the way we understand and think about color. However, I believe there is much more close studying and research needed in the future to make more exceptional claims involving color perception to conclude that it is either solely universal or reliably dependent on one’s culture and language.
Jules Davidoff, Ian Davies, and Debi Roberson conducted a study in 2000 that replicated older research studies. Through replication of these studies, they discovered support of how language affects color categorization, perception, and recognition. Davidoff, Davies, and Roberson (2000) point out that the data they collected from their experiments support the idea of a relationship between using color terminology and categorization. Moreover, their research has backed up the conception of everyone sharing the method of using different color categories to understand the concept of color. We do not only divide color in similar ways since birth, and there are some aspects of nurture involved through the particular language (or in some case, languages) we end up learning that influence where we dr...

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...and Roberson (2008) emphasized how their experiment continued to support the Brown and Lenneberg question of their 1954 article regarding the relationship between color labeling and cognition.
Based on the review of both contemporary and older literature, I do believe that there is a decent amount of evidence that supports the concept of both culture and language having an impact on color cognition. This is shown through the various studies, remarks, and replications of experiments I discussed in this paper. However, the concept of color is still a very convoluted one that needs more specific and various research. One cannot conclude that there is absolutely no relevance to the nature aspect of how we perceive color. Furthermore, I argue that one cannot also argue that there is only relevance to this innateness and universality we all have in our color cognition.

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