Pareidolia, See Forms Where There Are None

Have you ever seen the shape of a face on a lock? Have you seen a face in a cloud? These experiences are not abnormal. They are rather common and could be examples of pareidolia. Pareidolia is defined as a psychological phenomenon where a vague and random stimulus (usually an image) is mistakenly perceived as a recognizable shape. The individual provides organization and meaning to an ambiguous or unstructured stimulus.

Examples of pareidolia are the faces that we see drawn on the profile of a mountain or in the flames that arise from a chimney. Pareidolias are not pathological at all. Perhaps what would be pathological was the inability to form them. Thus, they  are a magnificent example of what constitutes an abnormal mental experience. The term abnormality, in this case, does not imply pathology, disease or morbidity.

Pareidolia is a perceptual distortion

Disorders of perception and imagination are usually classified into two groups: perceptual distortions and delusions. Perceptual distortions are only possible through the action of the sense organs.

These perceptual distortions occur when a stimulus that exists outside of us (and that is accessible to the sensory organs) is perceived in a different way than one might expect. The anomaly is that the physical characteristics of the stimulating world are perceived in a distorted way.

By distortion we mean either of these two possibilities:

• Perception different from the usual and more likely taking into account previous experiences or the way in which other people perceive this stimulus.
• Perception different from that which would be derived in the case of considering only the physical configuration of the stimulus. This happens in illusions. This is the case of pareidolia.

In the case of perceptual delusions, a new perception is produced. This new perception tends to coexist with the rest of the “normal” perceptions. Perceptual delusions are not based on stimuli existing outside the individual (as in hallucinations).

How many types of perceptual distortions are there?

Within the perceptual distortions we find the following classification:

• Hyperesthesia and hypoesthesia. They are abnormalities in the perception of intensity (eg, hyperalgesias and hypoalgesias, that is, feeling more or less pain).
• Anomalies in the perception of quality. They refer to colored visions and changes in the perception of the color of objects.
• Metamorphopsies. They suppose anomalies in the perception of size and / or shape.
• Anomalies in perceptual integration. They are rare abnormalities that sometimes appear in organic states and in schizophrenia.
• Delusions. Here we find two types: the sense of presence and pareidolias (subject of this article).

As we can see, there are several perceptual distortions that we can experience, some more surprising than others. In the subject at hand, we see how pareidolia is a type of illusion.

Illusions: anomalies in the structuring of ambiguous stimuli

An illusion can be conceptualized as a distortion of perception insofar as it is defined as a “wrong perception of a specific object”. Thus, illusions are perceptions that do not correspond to the objective physical characteristics of a specific stimulus.

From a classical psychological perspective, illusions are the product of a disposition or tendency, the one that people have to organize, in a meaningful whole, elements more or less isolated from each other or with respect to a background. There are many examples of illusions, such as the Müller-Lyer illusion or reversible figures. We can easily find them on the internet.

Pareidolias have been able to influence human culture and religiosity

There are many phenomena that, observed in a superficial way, can be curious and even cause for a joke. This is the case with pareidolia. If we search online we can find references to a photograph of an explosion, or of the surface of another planet, a cloud or simply a stain on the wall, in which people claim to see religious images, aliens, faces of people, animals or texts of the Qur’an.

The phenomenon of pareidolia can also be expressed in auditory images, for example, in the song of the quetzal or in the echo of the Kukulkan pyramid at Chichen Itzá. We also find them in the supposed voices from beyond the grave, in the white noise of a television or in the records played backwards, in which supposed satanic messages are heard.

Aniconic religions (which reject icons) such as the Muslim and the Jewish, have their own manifestations associated with pareidolia. Thanks to it, Muslims see the name of Allah in clouds, patches of snow in the mountains or northern lights among other manifestations that have been called “Muslim pareidolias”, “Quran miracles” or Islam Miracles.

Among the faithful of the Jewish religion, the so-called secret codes of the Torah are known . In them, mathematicians who are experts in statistics believe they find prophetic texts of present or future events. Well, it is thought that they are probably influenced by the same phenomena as pareidolia.

A known case of pareidolia: the faces of Bélmez

The faces of Bélmez are a phenomenon considered by adepts of parapsychology as paranormal. This phenomenon consisted of the appearance of pigmentations, identified as faces, on the floor of a house located in Bélmez de la Moraleda. Bélmez is a small town in the province of Jaén, in Spain.

This phenomenon began to occur in 1971. Adepts of parapsychology considered this event as ” undoubtedly the most important paranormal phenomenon of the twentieth century .” However, several scholars on the subject classified it as a fraud.

This could be due to the phenomenon of pareidolia, since the faces that appeared in said house, in the form of humidity, could be due to a perceptual distortion. Even so, the faces that appeared in Bélmez seemed so real that it was also thought that they were made in secret by the owner of the house.

In any case, pareidolia is a phenomenon that never ceases to amaze us. It has its explanation in the way we organize stimuli in our mind and it is simply an illusion or perceptual distortion.