In principle, this variation could be due to low-level (individual differences in the sensory apparatus itself) or high-level (individual differences in feedback to the visual system) factors or both. In addition, there have been attempts to explain individual variation in the perceptual experience of the dress in terms of neuroscience and psychology. It can be argued that such stimuli were known in the color literature, e.g., Bloj, Kersten, and Hurlbert ( 1999), but it can be contended that this does not constitute a genuine bistable stimulus as one typically requires the retinal image not to change for those, which is not the case for Bloj et al. In other words, visual illusions with starkly divergent interpretations between observers were known in the domain of object, motion, or luminance perception but not color perception. However, these shifts away from veridical-dramatic as they might be-seem to happen in the same direction for all observers without color vision deficiencies. Specifically, it has to discount the wavelengths of the illuminant on an ongoing basis-a phenomenon known as “color constancy”-which can lead to dramatic shifts in the perceived color of suitably designed stimuli (Lotto & Purves, 1999). More fundamentally, the brain is always solving an inverse problem when deducing the color of an object from the spectral information given by the eyes. For instance, the local-patterned-background of a colored line can strongly shift the color appearance of that line (Monnier & Shevell, 2003). In the domain of color vision, we know of effects that can result in large discrepancies between the subjective percept and what one would expect from the wavelengths present in the stimulus. We interpret these findings in a Bayesian framework by also showing that prior exposure to long- or short-wavelength lights due to circadian type shapes the subjective experience of the dress stimulus in theoretically expected ways. We show that assumptions about the illumination of the dress-i.e., whether the stimulus was illuminated by natural or artificial light or whether it was in a shadow-strongly affects the subjective interpretation of observers, compared to demographic factors, such as age or gender, which have a relatively smaller influence. In this study, we address this possible explanation empirically by reporting on data from ∼13,000 observers who were surveyed online. It has been proposed that individual differences in the subjective interpretation of this stimulus are due to the different assumptions that individuals make about how the dress was illuminated. There has been considerable interest in a stimulus (“the dress”) that yields starkly divergent subjective color percepts between observers.
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