The eyes have it: Men do see things differently to women
The way that the visual centers of men and women’s brains works is different, finds new research published in BioMed Central’s open access journal Biology of Sex Differences. Men have greater sensitivity to fine detail and rapidly moving stimuli, but women are better at discriminating between colors.
Anecdotal proof time:
My dad’s truck.
Me, my brother, brothers’ friend and brothers’ friends’ sister, all XY, all see a greenish gray truck.
My mother, sister-in-law, brothers’ friends’ wife, all XX, all see a dark green truck.
It’s the blue/yellow dress all over again.
So, for XX folk, the increased colour differentiation comes from fact they carry two sets of genes that encode for colour detection, and because they don’t encode identically, each set creates a ever so slightly different perception of colour. And when you get two similar, but non identical perceptions of colour, you see more hues
I’ve heard that women have more cones in their eyes as well, which leads to a more nuanced sense of differentiation between colors.
I would really like to see a study on that. Take a color then slowly remove the contrast and ask when the change is discernible. Take a color then slowly transition to another color and ask the same question. Maybe do that with a few hundred people of both sexes and record the differences.
But it’ll have to take into account where people are from. In Northern countries for example, it wouldn’t surprise me if the difference between blues and whites is much more prominent than reds (snow vs not snow). Or for those living in the jungle all their lives, or those living in cities all their lives, and so on. I’m sure there’ll be obvious differences depending on origin and sex.
There’s definitely studies on it. I don’t know how they measure them, but it’s all about the number and type of cones in your eyes because there are a few different types that see different colors. This is why tigers are orange - because their prey lack the cones that see red, so the tigers look like the rest of the background foliage.
My two eyes see slightly different color. Noticed this years ago when looking at a florescent ceiling light with my eyes relaxed such that I was seeing a double image. The two images of the light were a slightly different color.
I’m a dude.
Hey, mine too. One gets a warmer white, the other a slightly cooler white.
Picture or it didn’t happen.
Now you need to post a picture of that truck!
This reminds me of my wife and I arguing over whether my shorts were grey or brown, she asks her friends and she just says “oh those, they are taupe”. Which essentially means my wife won that argument.