The color of the crowd.
Can you remember the average of eight colors you saw for a second better than the color of any single one of them?
Original study
- Ariely, D. (2001). Seeing sets: Representation by statistical properties. Psychological Science, 12(2), 157–162. Source
- Haberman, J., & Whitney, D. (2007). Rapid extraction of mean emotion and gender from sets of faces. Current Biology, 17(17), R751–R753. Source
- Whitney, D., & Yamanashi Leib, A. (2018). Ensemble perception. Annual Review of Psychology, 69, 105–129. Source
- Webster, J., Kay, P., & Webster, M. A. (2014). Perceiving the average hue of color arrays. Journal of the Optical Society of America A, 31(4), A283–A292. Source
- Maule, J., & Franklin, A. (2015). Effects of ensemble complexity and perceptual similarity on rapid averaging of hue. Journal of Vision, 15(4), 6. Source
- Brady, T. F., & Alvarez, G. A. (2011). Hierarchical encoding in visual working memory: Ensemble statistics bias memory for individual items. Psychological Science, 22(3), 384–392. Source
- Papenmeier, F., & Timm, J. D. (2021). Do group ensemble statistics bias visual working memory for individual items? A registered replication of Brady and Alvarez (2011). Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 83(3), 1329–1336. Source
Our adaptation
An adaptation of ensemble perception tasks (Ariely, 2001; Webster et al., 2014) using hue. In each round 8 colored discs in a ring appear on gray for 1 second, followed by a 300 ms blank. Colors are spread ±20° or ±40° around a hidden mean hue in CIELCh (L* = 65, C* = 36 fixed). In rounds 1, 3 and 5 the mean color, and in rounds 2 and 4 the color of one marked disc, is rebuilt with a hue strip.
Differences from the original study
- Screens are not calibrated.
- CIELCh is not perfectly uniform; the same hue difference does not look the same everywhere on the circle.
Measured variables
The columns of the open data file. List fields are expanded into numbered columns (for example rt_60, est_3); JSON columns contain only numbers and fixed stimulus names.
| Column | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
r | JSON | Rounds: [[type 0 = mean / 1 = single disc, mean hue, spread, target hue, answer hue, time in ms] × 5] (hue in degrees). |
pts_1 | number | Round score (0–10): 10 / (1 + (hue error / 20)^1.6). (item 1) |
pts_2 | number | Round score (0–10): 10 / (1 + (hue error / 20)^1.6). (item 2) |
pts_3 | number | Round score (0–10): 10 / (1 + (hue error / 20)^1.6). (item 3) |
pts_4 | number | Round score (0–10): 10 / (1 + (hue error / 20)^1.6). (item 4) |
pts_5 | number | Round score (0–10): 10 / (1 + (hue error / 20)^1.6). (item 5) |
points | number | Total score (0–50). |
mean_err | number | Mean hue error in mean rounds (°). |
member_err | number | Mean hue error in single-disc rounds (°). |
pull | number | In single-disc rounds, the ratio of the answer's shift toward the set mean (−1.5…1.5; positive = toward the mean); misses above 45° are excluded. |
Columns present in every file (14)
row_id | string | Row code. Regenerated at random in every release; it does not identify a person and cannot be matched across releases or experiments. |
experiment | string | Short name of the experiment (URL slug). |
experiment_version | integer | Version of the answer format. For experiments whose format changed, only the current format is published. |
date | YYYY-MM-DD | YYYY-Www | YYYY-MM | Day the answer was given (Istanbul time). If fewer than 5 answers share the same day, language and device, it is coarsened to the ISO week, and to the month if that is still too few. |
date_precision | day | week | month | Precision of the date column. |
lang | tr | en | (boş) | Interface language. Language recording started in the first week of October 2026; for earlier answers it is known only in experiments whose stimuli depend on the language, and empty otherwise. |
device | desktop | mobile | tablet | (boş) | Device class reported by the browser (class only; browser details are neither stored here nor published). |
source | site | embed | Where the answer came from: the balabs site or the experiment embedded on another site. The embedding site is not published. |
mode | free | daily | challenge | race | session | (boş) | Play mode in scored experiments: free play, daily round, challenge, race room, experiment session. Empty for unscored experiments and for older answers that did not store it. |
color_vision | normal | rg | by | contrast | (boş) | In color-based experiments, the color vision mode the participant chose: normal, red-green, blue-yellow or high contrast. Stimuli are generated along different axes per mode, so compare within a mode. Empty for other experiments. |
first_play | 1 | Every row is a participant’s first play of this experiment (always 1). Replays are stored only as leaderboard scores and are not part of the open data. |
seen_before | yes | no | unsure | (boş) | Participant’s own report of whether they had seen this experiment or its known answer before (in experiments that ask). |
duration_s | number | Time from the start of the experiment to submitting the answer, in seconds (measured in the browser, 0.1 s). |
play_score | number | Leaderboard score of the first play (scored experiments; defined on the method card). Empty for unscored experiments. |
Exclusion criteria
The server checks that the type of each of the five rounds follows the plan (mean, single, mean, single, mean) and that values are within range.
- Only each participant's first answer to this experiment; replays are not included.
- Simulated rows, bots, banned and sample accounts are not included.
- Answers before 3 October 2026 are not included (the first day the open data notice was live).
Scoring
Leaderboard score: total score (0–50); higher is better.
Leaderboard measure: crowd color (higher is better). The play_score column in the open data is this score for the first play.
Version notes
- October 2026
The interface language (lang) started being stored with each answer; for earlier answers it is known only in experiments whose stimuli depend on the language, and empty otherwise.