Pareidolia

Overview

The term pareidolia (Template:PronEng), referenced in 1994 by Steven Goldstein, describes a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon, and hidden messages on records played in reverse. The word comes from the Greek para- — beside, with or alongside — and eidolon — image (the diminutive of eidos — image, form, shape). Pareidolia is a type of apophenia.

Examples

Religious

Further information: [[:Perceptions of religious imagery in natural phenomena]]

There have been many instances of perceptions of religious imagery and themes, especially the faces of religious figures, in ordinary phenomena. Many involve images of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, or the word Allah.

In 1978, a New Mexican woman found that the burn marks on a tortilla she had made appeared similar to Jesus Christ's face. Thousands of people came to see the framed tortilla.

The recent publicity surrounding sightings of religious figures and other surprising images in ordinary objects, combined with the growing popularity of online auctions, has spawned a market for such items on eBay. One famous instance was a grilled-cheese sandwich with the Virgin Mary's face.

In September, 2007, the so-called "monkey tree phenomenon" caused a minor social mania in Singapore. A callus on a tree there resembles a monkey, and believers have flocked to the tree to pay homage to the Monkey God.

Rorschach test

Main article: Rorschach inkblot test

The Rorschach inkblot test uses pareidolia to attempt to gain insight into a person's mental state. The Rorschach is a projective test, because it intentionally calls out one's internal thoughts or feelings to be projected onto the cards. Projection in this instance is a form of "directed pareidolia" because the cards are not actually designed to resemble anything.

Audio

In 1971, Konstantin Raudive wrote Breakthrough, detailing what he believed was the discovery of electronic voice phenomenon (EVP). EVP has been described as auditory pareidolia.

The allegations of backmasking in popular music have also been described as pareidolia.

Explanations

Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan hypothesized that as a survival technique, human beings are "hard-wired" from birth to identify the human face. This allows people to use only minimal details to recognize faces from a distance and in poor visibility, but can also lead them to interpret random images or patterns of light and shade as being faces.

Clarence Irving Lewis

In his 1929 book Mind and the World Order, epistemologist and logician Clarence Irving Lewis, a founder of the philosophical school of conceptual pragmatism, used the question of how to determine whether a perception is a mirage as a touchstone for his philosophical approach to knowledge. Lewis argued that one has no way of knowing whether or not perceptions are "true" in any absolute sense; all one can do is determine whether one's purpose is thwarted by regarding it as true and acting on that basis. According to this approach, two people with two different purposes will often have different views on whether or not to regard a perception as true.

Gallery

• This alarm clock appears to have a sad face.

  This alarm clock appears to have a sad face.

• A satellite photo of a Mars mesa, with shadows creating the famous Face on Mars

  A satellite photo of a Mars mesa, with shadows creating the famous Face on Mars

• A tree in the shape of a person bowing

  A tree in the shape of a person bowing

• False wood

  False wood

See also

• Apophenia
• Clustering illusion
• Face perception, for the cognitive process
• Ghosts as an artifact of pareidolia
• Images of Jesus
• Paranoiac-critical method
• Perceptions of religious imagery in natural phenomena
• Simulacrum

Other natural examples

• Cydonia (the "Face on Mars")
• Man in the Moon
• Manicouagan Reservoir
• Old Man of the Mountain
• Moon rabbit

External links

• Fortean Times examples of pareidolia in nature
• Religious Pareidolia extensive collection of video and photographic demonstrations of pareidolia
• Skepdic.com Skeptic's Dictionary definition of pareidolia
• Lenin in my shower curtain (Bad Astronomy)
• The Stone Face: Fragments of An Earlier World
• Feb. 13, 2007 article in New York Times about cognitive science of face recognition
• Cells in temporal cortex of conscious sheep can respond preferentially to the sight of faces. Science. 1987 Apr 24;236(4800):448-50.
• Invariant visual representation by single neurons in the human brain. Nature. 2005 Jun 23;435(7045):1102-7.

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