Do You Hear What I Hear? Americans are Divided on Yanny / Laurel

If you haven’t heard of the Yanny / Laurel phenomenon, we’ll forgive you. It’s a viral debate, echoing 2015’s ‘the dress’ and has workplaces, friends, and families torn apart based on differing perceptions of a word uttered by a robot. If this sort of internet debate isn’t perfect for our polling, we don’t know what is.

So, is it Yanny or is it Laurel?

As you can see, weighted by US census, Americans are split on the debate, with over half having no idea what we’re asking about.

We found correlations about age: the older you are, you’re more likely to hear Laurel, and the younger you are, you’re more likely to hear Yanny.

Regional correlations were also interesting: Those in the US South are more likely to answer Yanny, while Midwesterners are more likely to say ‘huh?’ to the whole thing.

In another short poll, we also found that 11% of people heard BOTH words:

And, when comparing this to ‘the dress’ debate, which did people like more?

‘The dress’ is a favorite between the two, but only slightly.

What about when people don’t hear what you hear? A strong percentage find it weird:

Lastly, we wondered if Yanny / Laurel had any correlations to ‘the dress’ debate, too.

See for yourself:

When it came to the dress, people who say the dress is white and gold and more likely to say they heard Laurel, and the crowd who says the dress is black and blue are more likely to hear Yanny.

There you have it. The latest phenomenon brought to you by the internet, and our polling.

Editor’s Note: The results of these questions are preliminary and do not yet incorporate the scientific rigor of our official or published research. For fully scientific results to these or any of our ongoing research, please contact us.