THING: Do you see faces in objects?

Do you see faces in random objects? If you do, the fancy name for the phenomenon is pareidolia. Not only are they faces but they seem to have feelings! Some are in awe, some are mad and many others run the gamut of emotions.

Why does this happen? Scientists say that although faces all look a bit different they share common features like eyes and mouths. Our brains create systems of looking and processing.

David Alais, of the University of Sydney said, “We are such a sophisticated social species and face recognition is very important... You need to recognize who it is, is it family, is it a friend or foe, what are their intentions and emotions? Faces are detected incredibly fast. The brain seems to do this using a kind of template-matching procedure. So if it sees an object that appears to have two eyes above a nose above a mouth, then it goes, "Oh I'm seeing a face." It’s a bit fast and loose and sometimes it makes mistakes, so something that resembles a face will often trigger this template match.”

“If you look at any walls spotted with various stains or with a mixture of different kinds of stones, if you are about to invent some scene you will be able to see in it a resemblance to various different landscapes adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys, and various groups of hills. You will also be able to see divers combats and figures in quick movement, and strange expressions of faces, and outlandish costumes, and an infinite number of things which you can then reduce into separate and well conceived forms”

-Da Vinci

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