Pareidolia
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Missing image Pareidolia_3.jpg No consoling this alarm clock. |
Pareidolia (from Greek para- amiss, faulty, wrong + eidolon, diminutive of eidos appearance, form) is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (usually an image) being mistakenly perceived as recognizable. Common examples include images of animals or faces in clouds, seeing the man in the moon, and hearing messages on records played in reverse.
The human being has become "hard-wired" to identify the human face, for unresponsive infants tended to be ignored or abandoned, as Carl Sagan noted in The Demon-Haunted World.
Skeptics assert that sightings of religious or iconic figures in everyday objects, such as Marian apparitions, are examples of pareidolia, as are electronic voice phenomena. The Face on Mars is a phenomenon that succeded the Martian canals, both eventually attributed to pareidolia, when the "seen" images disappeared in better and more numerous images. So many Canadians thought they saw the face of the Devil in the Queen's hair on a dollar bill in the 1954 series, adapted from a photograph (illustration, right), that the bills were withdrawn from circulation.
Canadiandollar_devilshead.gif
A similar phenomenon is the clustering illusion.
The Rorschach inkblot test uses pareidolia attempting to gain insight into a person's mental state. While this test is still widely employed, its scientific basis is disputed, and no studies have shown empirical confirmation of success.
See also
External links
- The Skeptics Dictionary's definition for 'pareidolia' (http://skepdic.com/pareidol.html)
- Lenin in my shower curtain (http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/lenin.html)