Mary is conducting her doctoral research with a group of people on a small island in the South Pacific. She points to all the different colours in a multicoloured painting and asks the inhabitants to name each colour. Mary finds they report the same number of colours as they use in their language. Her results:

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The Worf hypothesis, also known as linguistic relativity, suggests that the language one speaks influences how one thinks about the world, including perception of colors. Mary's findings that the inhabitants report the same number of colors as they have words for in their language supports the idea that language can shape our perception of reality, in this case, color perception.

Mary Is Conducting Her Doctoral Research with a Group of People