Altered Color Perception
April 12, 2023 – Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, USA
The room looked something between a classroom and a lobby for a doctor’s office. Ross Sandberg and his wife, Alexa, sat in cushioned chairs and snuck glances at the ten other people seated with them.
“You said this wasn’t going to take long,” Ross whispered to Alexa.
She whispered back, “It wasn’t supposed to.”
Alexa was finishing her psychology degree at the University of Pittsburg and was required to participate in three on-campus lab studies. She dragged Ross along with her because they were each promised $100 and she wanted him to appreciate her college experience. Their time in the room began with filling out a bunch of permission and liability forms and installing an app on their phones. Ross was already eager to be done so they could get home and eat dinner.
A woman with bobbed hair, glasses, and wearing a white lab coat entered the room and dramatically announced, “I’m Professor Gooch. Thank you for being part of our study.”
All participants lowered their phones and stared at Professor Gooch.
“It’s not very often that you are part of something groundbreaking. Today’s your day. Our research group is pioneering a whole new understanding of color perception. We’ve found that the rods and cones in your eyes may respond the same way to different wavelengths, but your perception of color might be very different than the person next to you. It depends on how your brain developed and the specific chemistry it uses.”
Professor Gooch continued to talk enthusiastically about the brain, rods, and cones. At first, Ross was intrigued. The more scientific details she added, the less he listened. He was sure that she was exaggerating the significance of whatever it was she was doing. All scientists made a big deal out of minor things. Ross was not surprised at all to hear that some people perceived colors a little differently. But who cared if his version of a shade of red was not quite the same as someone else’s?
Professor Gooch finally wrapped up her presentation and exited into the hallway. Graduate student assistants appeared and escorted volunteers into small laboratory rooms. Ross was one of the last to leave. When he finally walked into a dark testing area, it reminded him of visiting an optometrist.
A graduate student pointed to a box resting on a table and said, “This machine will test your color perception. I need you to place your chin on the chinrest and look straight ahead through the holes.”
Ross positioned himself in front of the box and a pinwheel of lights began flashing. They changed colors and brightness. They moved toward his eyes and away again.
“Try to blink as little as possible,” the graduate student said.
Ross replied with, “I’m trying, but it’s really bright.”
After almost ten minutes, the lights turned off and Ross backed away from the box. The student looked at the electronic tablet in her hands and said, “I need you to wait right here. These are the kinds of results Professor Gooch will want to see.”
The graduate student disappeared and Ross fidgeted alone in the mostly dark room. After a few nervous minutes, Professor Gooch arrived holding her own electronic tablet.
“With results like yours, I like to speak with subjects personally,” Professor Gooch said in a deadly serious voice. “We’re finding that around 11% of people have color perception like you.”
Ross smirked and said, “How different could I really be?”
“We’ve determined that people like you, we call you betas, a minority of the population, perceive red and blue in the opposite way as the majority of the population. We call them alphas. So when a beta sees blue, an alpha perceives the same object as red. And vice-versa.”
Ross suddenly realized she was not talking about a slight change in color hue. She was telling him that he saw almost everything differently than most people. He shook his head and said, “How is that possible? How come I’ve never heard of this stuff before?”
“Our studies are very new and just coming out of university and clinical settings. But we already have technical papers on the effect. We call it red/blue flipping.”
“That doesn’t sound very scientific.”
“Modern scientists aren’t worried about sophisticated Latin or Greek terminology. We use terms people can remember.”
Ross swallowed hard and rubbed his forehead. “So what does this mean for me?”
“Well, there’s nothing wrong with you. Nothing in your life needs to change. You’re simply finding out you perceive the world differently than most of us.”
“A lot differently,” Ross added.
“Our studies are still developing, but we’re finding that betas like you tend to have deep emotions. You’re more sensitive to the world around you. You tend to be more artistic, especially when surrounded by other betas.”
“It’s a lot to take in.”
“I’m happy to answer any questions if I can. We want to hear about your experiences.”
Dr. Gooch departed and left Ross to stumble back to the initial waiting room. He found Alexa and immediately asked, “Are you an alpha or beta?”
“Alpha.”
“Well, I’m a beta.”
“Congratulations, I guess,” Alexa said nonchalantly.
“Do you realize what a big deal this is? It means we don’t see things the same way. What I think is blue, you think is red.”
“Yeah, it is pretty weird,” Alexa replied.
They left the building and Ross stopped to look up at the early evening sky. “I can’t imagine seeing that as my version of red. But that’s what you’re seeing.”
“And when you see blood, it looks like my version of blue. I don’t know. Doesn’t sound right. Maybe they’re just messing with our heads.”
“That professor said they already published papers on it. We could Google it and see.”
Ross used his phone to look up “red blue flipping” and sure enough, there were links to scientific journals and university websites around the world. Professor Gooch’s biography appeared at the top of the search page. “Seems legit,” Ross said as he scrolled through the results.
Ross and Alexa walked to their red car – which Ross now knew she was seeing as his blue – and began the drive home. As he scanned the colors around him on the street, Ross said, “You know, maybe this is why I don’t like some of the color combinations you do. Like the pillows on our bed. I keep saying they don’t match.”
“I think matching is always going to come down to personal taste.”
“And maybe this is why I don’t like swimming. I don’t like the color of the water, but for you it’s fine.”
“I hope you’re not going to try to explain everything in your life based on this. I mean, does it really make a difference if you’ve never known anything else?”
“Easy for you to say. You’re an alpha. The world is based around your preferences because you’re the majority.”
Alexa chuckled. “I don’t think we’re that different.
Ross looked over at her condescendingly. It was not surprising she did not understand. As a beta, he naturally grasped how important and traumatizing the differences were. An alpha would try to ignore them.
Ross flipped on the car’s radio, which was turned to a station playing the latest hits. He pressed the scan button until it landed on a classical station.
“Why are we listening to this?” Alexa asked.
“I want to try something different.”
Ross stared out at the passing world and again tried to imagine the shades and hues Alexa saw. He also looked inside the cars on the street, wondering which passengers might be seeing things the same way he did.
When Ross and Alexa reached their apartment, his struggle continued. He shuffled through their rooms identifying things he did not like, probably based on their color. He never cared for their couch. He did not like the plastic cups usually used during meals. He remained mesmerized by the TV screen, calculating what alphas were seeing and trying to understand their preferences.
Ross worked as a leasing agent at a firm specializing in large construction equipment. He split his time between customer visits and computer work in his office. When he arrived there the next morning, he examined the pictures on his wall and the personal items on his desk. He grabbed a large trash bin and tossed in anything with a red or blue dominant color. He kept green things. At least with green, he knew everyone was seeing them in the same way.
During a staff meeting in the firm’s conference room, he was drawn to the blue sky outside the window. He reminded himself he was not the same as his colleagues around the room. They thought differently. When one of them told a story about charging a customer for a piece of equipment leased from a different firm, Ross did not laugh like everyone else. He was a beta and not prone to take advantage of people. He skipped his usual lunch plans with the other agents. They were all obviously alphas.
Ross returned home and went straight to his closet. He moved every piece of green clothing he owned to one side.
“Where do you think I could buy more green shirts?” Ross asked Alexa.
“Why green? I don’t think that’s your color.”
“It’s neutral. It fits between the alpha and beta worlds.”
“I’m telling you, you’re taking that stuff too seriously.”
Ross grimaced behind her back. What other kind of response could he expect from an alpha?
He was wearing green that weekend when he drove to the paintball range for a long-planned game with his friends. The first fifteen minutes were exciting, but then Ross found the action repetitive: hide behind the hay bales, aim, fire, run to more hay bales. And the conversations between his friends were about such trivial topics. They were only interested in sports, vacations, and things you could buy. None of them noticed the trees and animals around the range. None of them were feeling deeply. At one time, the trivial stuff may have been fulfilling, but not anymore. Ross’s eyes were now open. When his friends drove to a sports bar for a late lunch, he returned home.
During the next handful of days, Ross’s life remained in turmoil. His exclusion from the alpha world was all too real and became easier to identify. Every sign and billboard reminded him that his perception was upside down. And it was not only things he saw. The podcasts he previously enjoyed were now filled with ideas and opinions he did not like. When he listened to his wife, he wondered if they were compatible. Maybe they were holding each other back.
One week after his diagnosis by Professor Gooch, Ross was starving to do something radical. He took the afternoon off work and drove by himself to the Pittsburg Carnegie museums. It was his first visit and he wandered around until an art museum called to him. He walked slowly past sculptures and paintings, deeply contemplating how they made him feel. Surely the images and figures were beta creations made by artists who saw the same colors he did. For the first time, even the most abstract pieces made sense.
On his way out of an impressionist exhibit, Ross discovered a large, open room flooded with sunlight. Inside were rows of easels and blank canvases. A few people stood in front of an easel holding brushes while an instructor called out advice from a raised platform. A sign outside the room advertised it as a walk-in class. Ross paced a circle in front of the door before entering.
The instructor instantly spotted Ross. He rushed over and introduced himself as Paul.
“I’ve never really tried painting before,” Ross said shyly.
“Perfect! You’re exactly who we’re looking for!”
“Do you have brushes I can use?”
“Of course. Let’s set you up in front of a frame.”
Paul grabbed a small set of brushes and squirted paint on a wooden board. He led Ross to a bright white canvas about two feet tall. “You might think I should ask you to start by copying another painting, but I want you to have total freedom. Paint abstractly. Use any of the colors you want. I want your feelings to explode from the paint.”
Before his color diagnosis, Ross would have scoffed at Paul’s directions. Now, he simply nodded and confidently grabbed a brush. He knew the gift was in him and he felt inspired by the beta paintings he had just admired.
Ross stabbed at the canvas with his brushes, adding dabs of paint here and line strokes there. He was not mimicking any concrete object. He wanted his colors and shapes to mirror how he felt. He filled one side of his canvas with angry reds and the other side with calm blues. Paul drifted past his easel and paused before offering an appreciative “hmmm.”
Ross was in the middle of adding a burst of yellow inspiration to this painting when his phone buzzed with a call. The number was from the University of Pittsburg. He decided it was important enough to answer.
“Is this Ross Sandberg?”
“Speaking.”
“I’m one of the students in Dr. Gooch’s lab. I’m calling to follow up after your initial meeting last week. Do you have a few minutes to talk?”
“Sure.” Ross left his canvas and walked out of the room.
“We’ve been tracking your activity with the app on your phone like we said we would. I think we’ve got some really good data. Now I’m hoping you’ll answer a set of questions. If you remember, our study is all about perception.”
“I definitely remember.”
“To start off, I have to come clean about the color test. There is no such thing as red/blue flipping. At least that we know of. We made all that up.”
“What? What about the test? And the papers I Googled?”
“All staged. We needed to be convincing. Our study is about how information like that can change perceptions. There’s actually no such thing as alphas and betas.”
“Are you sure? What about the artistic stuff? Being able to feel deeply?”
“That was all part of the false information for the experiment.”
Ross glanced back into the room at his painting. His face flushed. He could not decide if he wanted to punch someone or melt through the floor.
The voice on the phone continued with, “So, let me start by asking you how strongly the new information affected you.”
Ross gritted his teeth to catch his anger. “Not at all,” he said in a lifeless voice. Then he hung up.
His phone kept ringing as Ross walked directly out of the museum and found his car. All the way home, he kept his eyes on the gray road and yellow lines.
When the walk-in session was over at the museum, Paul asked if anyone knew the person who had left the unclaimed painting on Ross’s easel. “What a shame,” Paul concluded. “Obvious raw talent. I hoped he would come to one of my advanced classes.”
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