Stripes and Greys
Grey bars woven into black and white stripes, two ways.
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Grey bars woven into black and white stripes, two ways.
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Belonging beats bordering
Every grey bar is the same grey. The bars on the left usually look lighter, even though most of their border is white — which is the opposite of what simple contrast with the neighbouring edges predicts.
What seems to decide it is which stripe a bar belongs to: it is read as part of the stripe it lies in and compared with that. Michael White described the effect in 1979, and it is a standing puzzle for any theory that explains lightness by edges alone.