Pareidolia () is the tendency for perception to impose a meaningful interpretation on a nebulous stimulus, usually visual, so that one detects an object, pattern, or meaning where there is none. Pareidolia is a specific but common type of apophenia (the tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things or ideas). Common examples include perceived images of animals, faces, or objects in cloud formations; seeing faces in inanimate objects; or lunar pareidolia like the Man in the Moon or the Moon rabbit. The concept of pareidolia may extend to include hidden messages in recorded music played in reverse or at higher- or lower-than-normal speeds, and hearing voices (mainly indistinct) or music in random noise, such as that produced by air conditioners or by fans. Face pareidolia has also been demonstrated in rhesus macaques.
Etymology The word derives from the Greek words pará (παρά, "beside, alongside, instead [of]") and the noun eídōlon (εἴδωλον, "image, form, shape"). Karl Ludwig Kahlbaum introduced the German term Pareidolie in his 1866 paper "Die Sinnesdelierien" ("On Delusion of the Senses"). When Kahlbaum's paper was reviewed the following year (1867) in The Journal of Mental Science, Volume 13, Pareidolie was translated into English as "pareidolia", and noted to be synonymous with the terms "...changing hallucination, partial hallucination, [and] perception of secondary images."
Link to other conditions Pareidolia correlates with age and is frequent among patients with Parkinson's disease and dementia with Lewy bodies. Several case studies report intrusive pareidolia as a symptom presentation in obsessive compulsive disorder.
Explanations
Pareidolia can cause people to interpret random images, or patterns of light and shadow, as faces. A 2009 magnetoencephalography study found that objects perceived as faces evoke an early (165 ms) activation of the fusiform face area at a time and location similar to that evoked by faces, whereas other common objects do not evoke such activation. This activation is similar to a slightly faster time (130 ms) that is seen for images of real faces. The authors suggest that face perception evoked by face-like objects is a relatively early process, and not a late cognitive reinterpretation phenomenon. A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study in 2011 similarly showed that repeated presentation of novel visual shapes that were interpreted as meaningful led to decreased fMRI responses for real objects. These results indicate that the interpretation of ambiguous stimuli depends upon processes similar to those elicited by known objects. Pareidolia was found to affect brain function and brain waves. In a 2022 study, EEG records show that responses in the frontal and occipitotemporal cortexes begin prior to when one recognizes faces and later, when they are not recognized. By displaying these proactive brain waves, scientists can then have a basis for data rather than relying on self-reported sightings. These studies help to explain why people generally identify a few lines and a circle as a "face" so quickly and without hesitation. Cognitive processes are activated by the "face-like" object which alerts the observer to both the emotional state and identity of the subject, even before the conscious mind begins to process or even receive the information. A "stick figure face", despite its simplicity, can convey mood information, and be drawn to indicate emotions such as happiness or anger. This robust and subtle capability is hypothesized to be the result of natural selection favoring people most able to quickly identify the mental state, for example, of threatening people, thus providing the individual an opportunity to flee or attack preemptively. This ability, though highly specialized for the processing and recognition of human emotions, also functions to determine the demeanor of wildlife.
Pareidolia and creative thinking Pareidolia plays a significant role in creative cognition, enabling artists and viewers to perceive novel forms and meanings in ambiguous stimuli. Joanne Lee highlights that this phenomenon has been harnessed in artistic practices for centuries (Da Vinci for example). The phenomenon was particularly important to surrealism, where artists like Salvador Dali, influenced by André Breton, embraced pareidolic ambiguity to challenge rationalist perceptions and provoke new ways of seeing.
Examples
Mimetoliths
A mimetolithic pattern is a pattern created on rocks that may come to mimic recognizable forms through the random processes of formation, weathering and erosion. Many examples exist, from the Old Man of the Mountain (a face-like profile in a cliff) to Iztaccíhuatl, a range in Mexico whose name is Nahuatl for "White (like salt) woman", reflecting the four individual snow-capped peaks which depict the head, chest, knees and feet of a sleeping female when seen from east or west. A well-known example is the Face on Mars, a rock formation on Mars that resembled a human face in certain satellite photos. Most mimetoliths are much larger than the subjects they resemble, such as a cliff profile that looks like a human face. Picture jaspers exhibit combinations of patterns, such as banding from flow or depositional patterns (from water or wind), or dendritic or color variations, resulting in what appear to be miniature scenes on a cut section, which is then used for jewelry. Chert nodules, concretions, or pebbles may in certain cases be mistakenly identified as skeletal remains, egg fossils, or other antiquities of organic origin by amateur enthusiasts. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Japanese researcher Chonosuke Okamura self-published a series of reports titled Original Report of the Okamura Fossil Laboratory, in which he described tiny inclusions in polished limestone from the Silurian period (425 mya) as being preserved fossil remains of tiny humans, gorillas, dogs, dragons, dinosaurs and other organisms, all of them only millimeters long, leading him to claim, "There have been no changes in the bodies of mankind since the Silurian period... except for a growth in stature from 3.5 mm to 1,700 mm." Okamura's research earned him an Ig Nobel Prize (a parody of the Nobel Prize) in biodiversity in 1996. Some sources describe various mimetolithic features on Pluto, including a heart-shaped region.
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