What is Pareidolia | Psychology Concepts.
Pareidolia, the strange phenomenon of seeing faces or figures where there
The pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon which consists in that we can perceive a face or a human figure or animal in places from the most unexpected: the way of being placed the window or door in a building, the back of an alarm clock, a cloud, a toast, a faucet, etc.
There are a legion of followers who photographed and collected all kinds of objects and things that represented them as a figure or face.
But just as there are collectors simply attracted by the mere fact of curiosity, also we may find ourselves with two other types of followers of the pareidolia:
-Religious: those who see religious images, the face of Christ, the Virgin Mary, or even the devil anywhere: a wall, a toast, the sole of a shoe.
-Friends of the conspiracy theories: those who are trying to find an answer (most of times illogical) to supernatural, Paranormal, or murky political or military affairs-related phenomena.
-Watchdogs of morality, which are dedicated to find pictures of a sexual nature subliminally hidden in films from the Disney factory.
The phenomenon of the pareidolia is continually being studied by psychologists and experts who try to find out why our brain detects those objects, faces or figures where there is only a shadow, a spot of grease or a cloud, and where in fact there is nothing.
It is curious to check how many people who are not able to distinguish it with the naked eye, if it stimulates them showing them how and where you will find the figure, can reach sugestionar it and see something that is not really or not seen.
Noteworthy people who have ensured that the face of Jesus Christ he has appeared to them in a toast while they were having breakfast or those who say the silhouette of the devil between the smoke that came out during the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
Another case of pareidolia who became famous is the "face of Mars". A photo taken by the Viking spacecraft in 1976 in which showed himself to the surface of Mars and that many people were distinguished as a face that could well have been created by an intelligent civilization.
Nor can we forget those who are dedicated to search through the pareidolia subliminal messages in Disney cartoons. According to these, multiple drawings of the factory behind Disney is a catalogue of phallic objects and sexual content.
But religious and friends of the separate conspiracy theories, we have to pay attention to those that for sheer pleasure and fun are dedicated to photographing everything reminds them of a face.
We can see funny shapes that remind us of a face in faucets, buildings and frontal parts of cars, etc.
Also worth mentioning that they are becoming more designers, architects and/or creative to design his works thinking about a double reading by the brain of many people and that behind a simple and straightforward appearance, valuables, clothing or buildings hide curious faces.
In the network there are a few groups or pages where hang all the material that they find.
Pareidolia, a fruit of our imagination
Surely many times it has happened to walk down the street and see a face somewhere, and then a second look to realize that indeed had nothing sights. It is not any kind of disorder, but the opposite is only the brain facilitating the perception of things.
It is a psychological process by which we interpret images chaotic or random shapes and more familiar figures, particularly faces.
What is the pareidolia?
Our mind and our imagination tends to relate everything, since the human brain always tries to place an explanation where it is and understand it all. The face of the animals, and humans in particular, has a very particular geometric form and our brain is trained to recognize one quickly.
Sure you spent, often identify a 'face' to the front of a car, for example. This is because the foci, bumper and license plate form a figure resembling a human face with eyes, nose and mouth.
Now the Association is usually less explicit and emerges more abstractly in different places. The food, the leaves of a tree, a pool of water or clouds in the sky. It is a sort of optical illusion in which the brain associated with random figures to the shape of a face.
The Association can also occur but with faces, with religious images, for example, for some people they are very familiar and important images, and the brain is somehow sugestionado to identify them on either side.
Most of the time happens to us create or identify these faces or other things in places where there is chaos, for example in the veins of wood, marble, tiles, on the rocks or on the bark of a tree. There where no order our mind tries impose since our brain is always looking to classify and sort our world to understand it better.
The pareidolia is a perfectly normal cognitive process that occurs due to some interaction between the primary visual cortex and the prefrontal cortex. This was formally defined thanks to recent research by the University of Toronto that was studied, precisely in what region of the brain process occurs.
Published for educational purposes
