Face pareidolia – the phenomenon of seeing faces in everyday objects – uses the same brain processes that we use to recognise and interpret other ‘real’ human faces. “A striking feature of these objects is that they not only look like faces but can even convey a sense of personality or social meaning.

Pareidolia

Pareidolia can cause people to interpret random images, or patterns of light and shadow, as faces. The authors suggest that face perception evoked by face-like objects is a relatively early process, and not a late cognitive reinterpretation phenomenon.

Pareidolia is a type of apophenia, which is a more generalized term for seeing patterns in random data. Some common examples are seeing a likeness of Jesus in the clouds or an image of a man on the surface of the moon. A whale tour Down Under witnessed as many as 70 orcas hunt and kill a blue whale.

Humans have a tendency to see faces where there are none. So do computers. This is an example of a phenomenon known as pareidolia, the human tendency to read significance into random or vague stimuli (both visual and auditory).

If you regularly see a human face in everyday items or hear voices in high/low frequency music or music played backwards, then you could have Pareidolia. There are many quizzes online – that potentially were not created by neuroscientists – that could help you determine if you see faces in objects or not.

Seeing familiar objects or patterns in otherwise random or unrelated objects or patterns is called pareidolia. It’s a form of apophenia, which is a more general term for the human tendency to seek patterns in random information. Everyone experiences it from time to time.