Have you ever looked at clouds and looked for faces in them? Without knowing it, you have had an experience of pareidolia. This phenomenon consists of imagining human features in sometimes unusual places. These faces are very often rudimentary: two eyes, a mouth and sometimes a nose.
Emotional reading
“This basic pattern of traits that defines the human face is something our brain is particularly sensitive to, and it’s probably what draws our attention to the objects that trigger pareidolia.”, explains behavioral neuroscientist Colin Palmer of the University of New South Wales, Australia.
Most of the time, we don’t just guess at faces in objects, we interpret what we see there. We read their expressions to give them even more humanity. This explains the power of pareidolia on the spirits.
A recent study conducted by Professors Colin Palmer and Colin Clifford demonstrated that when individuals are presented with objects whose “gaze” is directed to one side, they will tend, by dint of observation, to see the gaze shift slightly to the opposite side.
“This reflects the habituation process in the brain, whereby cells involved in detecting the direction of gaze change their sensitivity when we are repeatedly exposed to faces with a particular gaze direction.”, analysis Palmer.
Is it serious doctor?
The good news is that detecting faces everywhere and interpreting their expressions is by no means a sign of instability; it is even in our nature to decipher those around us. It allows us to pay attention to others and understand what they may be feeling, just by reading their faces.
“There is an evolutionary advantage in being really good or really good at detecting faces, it is important for us socially, confides Pr. Palmer. It is also important for detecting predators. ” So while we are not beasts threatened by predators, it is still good to see too many faces than not to detect enough.
Astonishing anecdote, we are not the only ones to be subject to the phenomenon of pareidolia. A 2017 study has shown that a certain species of monkeys, the macaques rhésus, was also able to detect imaginary faces in inanimate objects.
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