Pareidolia, why we see faces in the clouds

Pareidolia It is a phenomenon in which an individual perceives a vague stimulus and interprets it as a recognizable figure.

There are many examples of paleidolia, such as visualizing faces, animals or other forms in the clouds; Also, when faces are perceived in mountainous profiles.

Some people also receive countenance in buildings, on the pavement, on the moon, the moldy walls and other surfaces.

Similarly, it is common for people who perceive pareidolia to see religious figures in rocks, trees or other common places.

It is also interesting that some individuals when observing these figures also attribute an emotional state to the face they perceive, such as a sad, angry or crying face.

What is the explanation of pareidolia?

Pareidolia It can be explained by a familiarity -based effect, which is similar to those situations in which some people claim to have had a Deja vu.

This is nothing more than a fallacious experience, since there is no experience that is repeated, but a feeling of repetition, which is erroneously produced by the brain, through a feeling of familiarity.

As well as this sensation described, it also occurs with pareidolia, an effect on which the brain creates an image with some familiarity.

Therefore, pareidolia could also be defined as a capacity to find similar between forms that are different.

But, this does not happen to be a phenomenon of a psychological order in which visual perception intervenes.

Such experience It could also be classified as a skill that the brain possesses to give a shape to a vague stimulus, At the subjective level, since the object itself is not what is believed to see.

Apparently, this ability would have been acquired by man in his evolutionary process, since, the skill and speed to recognize a face, or identify an emotional state of another person, would give him the ability to flee, in case of threat, and preserve the life.

Author Andrés Reina Gutiérrez, in his study on paleidole The forms that are stored in your memory.

Along with this, apofenia is also an important mechanism, since this allows a connection between two experiences that are different.

This explains why some people experience hierophany, or the phenomenon in which not only visual levels are found, but is given a mystical meaning.

Pareidolia, a basic pattern

Pareidolia then obeys the monitoring of a basic face pattern. Therefore, people have the tendency to observe a mouth, eyes, or other figures, although the face is more common.

Believe that faces angry on a surface can be due to the fact that it is familiar with it. However, when the face is observed, there is also a need to recognize him, as well as his expression. This is known as facial pareidolia.

This not only occurs in human beings, but also in primates, so, among the explanations of this phenomenon, It is also considered that faces identification offers an evolutionary advantage, since it is relevant at the social level, as well as to identify predators.

It should be noted that the majority of research on this subject do not focus on discovering how the brain does this type of operation, but rather, the need for study on paleidolia has emphasized to have a better understanding of cognitive disorders, especially Those who relate to facial recognition, such as Prosopagnosia, for example.

In any case, beyond that the issue arouses a curiosity, analyzing the pareidolia makes us rethink the doubts that many philosophers of the mind have already previously exposed.

Some of these concerns are related to the correspondence between the physical world and what we perceive, specifically, why are the differences between the existing and what is perceived.

Thinking about these issues has led to many authors to consider that We never get to perceive objects in themselves, but only their representations.

If so, our visual system would not be showing us the objects of the real world, but we would only have the data provided by the senses.

If we came to think that the things we see are really the forms that exist in the world that is given to us, then we would be facing a current called "naive realism", which already has criticism against.

The phenomenon of pareidolia is wonderful only because of the reflections that can arouse on perception, visual forms, hierophany, as well as our creative potential by establishing similarities between different aspects.

How visual perception occurs

Bibliography

• Gutiérrez, a. R. (2014). Pareidolia as a creative resource in illustration processes. Nexus, 188-206.
• Palmer, c. J., & Clifford, C. W. (2020). Face Pareidolia Recruits Mechanisms for Detecting Social Social Attention. Psychological Science, 31(8), 1001-1012.
• Taubert, j., Wardle, s. G., Flessert, m., Leopold, d. TO., & Ungerleider, l. G. (2017). Face Pareidolia in The Rhesus Monkey. Current Biology, 27(16), 2505-2509.
• Wardle, s. G., Taubert, j., Teichmann, l., & Baker, C. Yo. (2020). Rapid and Dynamic Processing of Face Pareidolia in the Human Brain. Nature Communications, eleven(1), 1-14.