They’re in clouds, electric sockets and even on toast. Why do humans see faces in everyday objects? | Psychology
Faces: You can see them in clouds, in electrical outlets, and even on a $28,000 toasted sandwich It is said to resemble the Virgin Mary.
Known as facial pareidolia, seeing faces in inanimate objects or patterns of light and shadow is a common phenomenon.
Our brains are so primed to perceive facial features that we see faces even in meaningless visual noise, especially when images are symmetrical, according to new research.
In a study published in the journal Royal Society Open ScienceThe researchers showed participants abstract images of everyday objects that resembled faces, as well as visual noise that had no meaning.
The majority of participants (90%) reported seeing a face in at least one of the noise images.
Study co-author Prof Branka Spehar from the University of New South Wales said the researchers wanted to investigate whether more minimal images of objects with face-like features, including “two round things that could be eyes and a horizontal thing that could be a mouth”, would produce similar visual responses.
People saw faces more often in images of objects (96.7% of images) than in visual noise (53.4%).
Study participants were more likely to perceive faces in both objects and visual noise as male; This finding supports previous studies on facial pareidolia. The reason for this gender bias is unclear, Spehar said.
“People tend to see images of pareidolia as male, young and happy,” said Prof David Alais, a psychologist and neuroscientist at the University of Sydney who was not involved in the research. “The most striking pareidolia images feature these…open, wide-eyed expressions that may remind you of youthful exuberance or babies.”
However, faces perceived in artificial noise were more likely to be seen as older and angry, while object faces were more likely to be seen as happy or surprised.
Stating that the reasons for this are still unknown, Spehar suggested that perhaps our brain is ready to detect threats in unfamiliar environments.
In a second experiment, researchers showed short clips of noise moving in both random and vertically symmetric patterns. Participants saw faces more often in symmetrical clips (65.8% of clips) than in random patterns (23.6%).
Participants reported seeing various images, such as dragons and demons, in random noise. “When you apply vertical symmetry, faces become dominant,” Spehar said.
Pareidolia arises as a “false positive” in visual processing, Alais said.
“One of the most highly adapted things we do with our visual system is detecting the presence of faces,” he said. “You want to detect faces as quickly as possible, whether they are friends or foes… but you get caught off guard a little bit, sometimes you catch fake faces.
“The contemporary view of the brain and how it works to form our perceptions of the world is that it imposes patterns and predictions on incoming input,” he said. “It does this for efficiency and speed reasons.”
A brain system known as the face-selective network is geared towards detecting two eyes, a nose and a mouth, he said. “We tend to use this type of pattern, and we may have a tendency to see faces in noise compared to other objects.”
