Have you ever looked at your morning toast only to discover that the face of Jesus had miraculously appeared on it? Or have you stepped outside and looked up to admire the fluffy white clouds in the blue sky and realized that clouds formed the picture of a whale swimming in the ocean? Or perhaps you looked at the moon through a backyard telescope and saw that the face of Abraham Lincoln had been carved on the lunar surface. While some of these things might sound a little crazy, they are just everyday examples of pareidolia.
The toast, by the way, can probably be sold on Ebay; the lunar face can contribute to the conspiracy theory that the Republican Party was founded by aliens; and the whale clouds will simply morph into some other interesting set of images.
Pareidolia is the brain’s ability to make culturally appropriate symbols out of random shapes. In other words, the mind simply perceives a familiar pattern where there is no actual pattern. This is not really a form of insanity, but seems to have evolved as a survival trait in our ancient ancestors.
The human brain is an amazing system: it stores several different kinds of memories and then is able to recall and re-assemble them quickly when required. Memory is stored in several places in the brain: for example, memories of visual images may be stored in various areas of the visual cortex while memories of tactile experiences are stored in the somatosensory cortex. The brain has an ability to pull these memories out from different places and put them together. In his book In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind, Eric Kandel writes:
“Recall of memory is a creative process. What the brain stores is thought to be only a core memory. Upon recall, this core memory is then elaborated upon and reconstructed, with subtractions, additions, elaborations, and distortions.”
With regard to the survival of our ancient ancestors, what this means is that we recorded memories of dangerous situations—these memories could involve any or all of the senses, not just visual. Then when we encounter something similar, our brain connects “the dots” and says danger. This gave our ancestors an edge in escaping from the danger.
Part of the ability is about perception. Michael O’Shea, in his book The Brain: A Very Short Introduction, writes:
“Perceptions are the brain’s educated guesses about what the combined senses are telling it, and as such they will almost always depend on interactions between different modalities.”
Being able to perceive things based on just partial sensory input is a part of our remarkable ability to recognize patterns. In other words, we “connect the dots”—we don’t have to see the entire lion waiting in the grass, we see the twitching tail and we put it quickly together. In his book
The Accidental Species: Misunderstandings of Human Evolution, Henry Gee writes:
“So, while we are very good at recognizing objects, our talent is so refined that we are inclined to see patterns where there aren’t any.”
Our ability to perceive patterns coupled with a desire to explain the unknown and a bit of creative imagination may have resulted in religion. Henry Gee writes:
“It is easy to see how our ancestors, living much closer to nature, the unknown, and the reality of sudden and unexplained phenomena than we do nowadays, would hear thunder in the mountains and console themselves with stories of angry gods. And because telling stories is what we do, even without conscious intervention, it’s easy to underestimate how the power of narrative undermines our efforts to make sense of the past, in any clear, cool, or rational way.”
In noting that humans are quick to infer that the actions of nature are caused by unseen agents, Susan Blackmore, in her book
Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction, writes:
“Using this ability people easily jump to the conclusion that events are caused by an agent when they are not.”
In answering the question, “Why are humans so prone to believing in ghosts, spirits, and gods?” Susan Blackmore writes:
“We simply cannot help adopting the intentional stance and so we imagine that someone must have caused the events we see.”
While the examples of pareidolia that we started with—Jesus on toast, Lincoln on the moon, and whales in the clouds—are examples of the human brain making connections with visual patterns, the human brain can see other kinds of patterns as well. This can include conspiracy theories as well as predictions regarding the end of the world. Thus, some people are able to connect natural events—earthquakes, storms, droughts, floods, and so on—with social events—women’s clothing, same sex marriage, women’s rights, and so on—together with vague prophecies from supposedly ancient religious books and arrive at the conclusion that the end of the world must be near.