At a young age, we are taught the color wheel.  From primary and secondary colors to the neverending varieties in the crayon boxes at school, children are surrounded by the learning of colors and their corresponding names.  When the firetruck drives by, we point and ask, “What color is that?”  Cheerfully, a child shouts, “RED!”  Flipping through a storybook, we point to each character’s shirt and inform children what the colors are called. 

So have you ever wondered why humans are attracted to different colors more than others?  Why is it that my favorite colors are red and pink, while my boyfriend chooses blue?  Are our brains programmed to favor certain colors over others, and are each of our brains programmed slightly differently?  Do different hues, shades, and tones give our eyes more or less pleasure to view? I am skeptical to believe that something so concrete as a hue, could affect each person differently.

My therory is that every human has a slightly varied portrayal of colors in their eyes.  Though we all point out a firetruck and say, “That’s red,” we are not all seeing the same thing.  We have been trained to call that hue by the english name: red.  But the “red” that my eyes are seeing, may not be the “red your eyes see.  My theory is that red has become the general name given to many different colors. 

Let’s look at the world through my eyes for a minute.  Taking a glance around the room, I see several things that I was taught are called “red.” The electric guitar by the door, the alarm clock on the shelf, my shirts and socks. I call these items “red” because they look exactly like what my parents pointed to in the storybooks when I was growing up.  They pointed to those books and said “r-e-d” because that is what it looked like when they were taught as children. 

Now, let’s look at my world through someone else’s eyes.  Standing in my room, you would pick out the same objects as myself and call them red.  But the red you are seeing might not be the red I’m seeing.  The color that you call “red” may look like the color I call “purple.” 

What it comes down to is: Your “red” may look slightly different or altered from my “red.”  Though we both were taught to call them “red,” we do not realize that our eyes are taking in varied hues.  This means that your “red” could be an ugly, unappealing color, while my “red” is inviting, warm, and attractive.  Hence the phenomenon of: favorite colors.

To take it one step further, our whole worlds could be slightly varied versions of eachother.  Just different enough to create favoritism and bias.  Your taste of “sour” may be an entirely different experience from my taste of “sour,” which is why I enjoy it and you may not.  It is as if our minds are puzzles, all of them with the same pieces but fit together just a little off each time.