Do we all see the same thing? We looked at 100 years of research on perception and found something surprising.

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It’s one of the deepest mysteries of the human mind: Do we all see the world the same way? In 1956, three social scientists set out to answer this question. From their offices at Northwestern University, Donald Campbell and Melville Herskovits teamed up with Marshall Segall, of Syracuse University, to coordinate an ambitious new investigation. They sent researchers on a mission to societies near and far, urban and rural: A gold mine in Johannesburg; a community of foragers in the Kalahari Desert; the Philippine island of Mindoro; and even their own college campus in Evanston, Illinois.

Tucked into each of their suitcases was a booklet of drawings, including 12 e