Pareidolia: Seeing Forms That Are Not There

Have you ever seen a face in a lock or some particular shape in a cloud?  These experiences are not strange, but rather common and examples of pareidolia . Pareidolia is defined as a psychological phenomenon in which a vague and random stimulus (usually an image) is mistakenly perceived as a recognizable shape. The individual gives organization and meaning to an ambiguous or unstructured stimulus.

Examples of pareidolia are the faces we see in the profile of a mountain or in the flames that burn in the fireplace. The pareidolias are not at all pathological, quite the opposite. They are a magnificent example of an abnormal mental experience, where 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 deceptions. Perceptual distortions are possible only through the activity 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 differently than one might expect. The anomaly lies in the fact that the physical characteristics of the world of stimuli are perceived in a distorted way.

By distortion we refer to one of these two possibilities:

• Perception different from usual and more likely taking into account previous experiences or the way in which other people perceive a stimulus.
• Perception different from that which would result considering only the physical configuration of the stimulus. This is the case of the pareidolie.

In the case of perceptual deceptions, a new perception is produced. This new perception usually coexists with the rest of the “normal” perceptions. Perceptual deceptions are not based on stimuli existing outside the individual (as happens in hallucinations -M).

How many types of perceptual distortions are there?

Within the perceptual distortions we find the following classification:

• Hyperesthesia and hypoesthesia. They are anomalies in the perception of intensity (eg hyperalgesia and hypoalgesia, ie feeling more or less pain).
• Anomalies in the perception of quality. They have to do with colored visions and changes in the color perception of objects.

• Metamorphopsias. Abnormalities in the perception of size and / or shape.
• Anomalies in perceptual integration. They are rare anomalies that sometimes appear in organic states and in schizophrenia. There are two types: the sensation of a presence and the pareidolias (subject of this article).

As we can see, we can experience different perceptual alterations, some more surprising than others. In this article we analyze the paradolies.

Illusions: anomalies in the structuring of ambiguous stimuli

An illusion can be conceptualized as a distortion of perception as defined as “misperception of a specific object”. Illusions are therefore perceptions that do not correspond to the objective physical characteristics of a specific stimulus.

From a classical psychological perspective, the illusions are the product of a disposition or tendency, which is to organize in a more or less significant blocks together elements between them 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.

The pareidolias have influenced human culture and religiosity

Many phenomena, when viewed superficially, can be curious and even amusing. This is the case with pareidolia. If we search online, we can easily find photographs of an explosion, the surface of another planet, a cloud or simply a spot on the wall, in which people claim to see religious images, extraterrestrials, faces, animals or texts from the Koran. .

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

Aniconic religions (which reject icons), such as Muslim and Jewish, have different manifestations associated with pareidolia. Thanks to it, Muslims see the name of Allah in the clouds, in the snow or in the Northern Lights, manifestations that have been called “Muslim pareidolias”, “miracles of the Koran” or “miracles of Islam”.

Among the faithful of the Jewish religion, the so-called secret codes of the Torah are known . In them, mathematicians in statistics believe they find prophetic texts of present or future events. Also in this case it is thought that there is the influence of pareidolia phenomena.

A known case of pareidolia: the faces of Bélmez

The faces of Bélmez are a phenomenon that the adepts of parapsychology regard as paranormal. This phenomenon consists in 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, Spain.

This phenomenon began to occur in 1971. Parapsychology experts considered this event as “without doubt, the most important paranormal phenomenon of the twentieth century “. However, many scholars have classified it as a scam.

All this could be due to the pareidolia phenomenon, which explains the faces that appeared in the house, in the form of humidity. Despite this, the faces that appeared in Bélmez looked so real that it was even thought that they were created in secret by the landlord.

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