Pareidolia

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Hidden messages
Subliminal messages Audio Backmasking Pareidolia Psychorama Reverse speech Numerical Theomatics Visual Fnord Ambigram Pareidolia See also Apophenia Cryptography Exposure effect Observer-expectancy effect Pattern recognition
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Pareidolia (pronounced /pɛɹaɪˈdoliə/ or /pæraɪˈdəʊliə/), first used in 1994 by Steven Goldstein, describes a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) 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 word from Greek para- amiss, faulty, wrong + eidolon, diminutive of eidos appearance, form.

This alarm clock appears to have a sad face.

Human beings are apparently "hard-wired" to identify the human face. One possible explanation for this is that unresponsive infants tended to be ignored or abandoned, as Carl Sagan speculated 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 succeeded the Martian canals, both eventually attributed to pareidolia, when the "seen" images disappeared in better and more numerous images. 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). The bills were not withdrawn from circulation, but the image was altered in its next printing.

The "devil's head" illusion on the 1954 Canadian dollar

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.

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

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