By golly, they've found Jesus!

For any individual who has browsed for anything online, pop-up advertisements or flashing advertisements on the side of the page are almost guaranteed to bombard the individual’s online experience. Common interruptive advertisements include “clicking here!” to be blown away by optical illusions. But before one becomes a victim of such advertising of optical illusions, one should be aware of the tricks that color can play on us, such as those presented in Josef Albers’ book, Interaction of Color. Albers discusses the color illusion of the after-image/simultaneous contrast and how it can cause unique psycho-physiological experiences.

Referring back to the bothersome online advertisements, an example of the after-image/simultaneous contrast color illusion is seen in the commonly seen “See Jesus!” optical illusion [see below].

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ad/Afterimage.svg/542px-Afterimage.svg.png)

Viewers are instructed to focus on the four dots lined up in the middle of the seemingly random-looking image for 30 seconds. Afterwards, viewers can close their eyes, or divert their gaze to a white wall, and lo and behold, an image of Jesus will suddenly appear! Albers provides the explanation that it is innate in our human nature to be inevitably prone to fall for such color deception tricks. The nerve ends on the human retina receive colors, and staring at one particular color for a long time will fatigue that particular color’s sensitivity. Therefore, after staring at the four black dots in the Jesus image for 30 seconds, there will be an automatic shift when attention is taken off of the four black dots – when viewers either close their eyes or divert their gaze to a white wall.

The significance that color deception plays in everyday life is not related to clicking on online advertisements to get a quick entertainment thrill. Ideas such as the after-image/simultaneous contrast emphasize the role that color interaction has in society. Interaction of color is often a determinant of how people perceive things that they encounter in their life, which brings up the interesting fact that no human – even with a trained eye – can prevent falling for color deception.