Poll Results

Poll 155:
Which line separates yellows from oranges?

Total votes: 3785

G: 639 (16.9%)
H: 604 (16.0%)
I: 532 (14.1%)
F: 522 (13.8%)
J: 471 (12.4%)
E: 333 (8.8%)
K: 224 (5.9%)
L: 141 (3.7%)
D: 101 (2.7%)
M: 70 (1.8%)
N: 46 (1.2%)
A: 31 (0.8%)
O: 25 (0.7%)
S: 15 (0.4%)
P: 10 (0.3%)
C: 9 (0.2%)
B: 6 (0.2%)
Q: 5 (0.1%)
R: 1 (0.0%)

The reason I asked this question was because I noticed that many, if not most, Americans tend to call the middle traffic light "yellow", whereas everyone I know here in Australia calls it "orange". Yet I've been to the US several times, and driven there, and the light is pretty much the same colour as it is here. I've also seen mass market cheddar cheese in the US, which has a disturbing dark orange colour compared to the cheddar cheese I know and love. But again, many Americans I know describe it as yellow.

So my theory is that the different cultures have different culturally ingrained definitions of what is yellow and what is orange. I suggest that exactly the same colour would be called "yellow" by a significant majority of Americans, but "orange" by most Australians.

Of course, this simple exercise depends on the calibrations of your monitors, and I'm not collecting additional data on responders' cultural backgrounds, but I thought it would be interesting to see what sort of spread there is.