Paredolia and Apophenia - The World As We Wish To See It

When faced with supposed paranormal activity the human brain is easily fooled into thinking that what it has just witnessed is truly paranormal. Sometimes, as has been discussed elsewhere in this blog, the activity or experience can be attributed to perfectly normal if somewhat rare set of coincidences. Occasionally it is down to ambiguity or misperception, but also a little known phenomenom called pareidolia and apophenia.

The term pareidolia (pronounced /pæraɪˈdoʊliə/) describes a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon, and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse. The word comes from the Greek par- —"beside", "with" or "alongside"- meaning, in this context, something faulty or wrong (as in paraphasia, disordered speech)—and eidolon—"image" (the diminutive of eidos —"image", "form", "shape"). Pareidolia is a type of apophenia (the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data.)

The Rorschach inkblot test uses pareidolia to attempt to gain insight into a person's mental state. The Rorschach is a projective test, because it intentionally calls out one's internal thoughts or feelings to be projected onto the cards. Projection in this instance is a form of "directed pareidolia" because the cards are designed not to resemble anything.

Carl Sagan hypothesized that as a survival technique, human beings are "hard-wired" from birth to identify the human face. This allows people to use only minimal details to recognize faces from a distance and in poor visibility but can also lead them to interpret random images or patterns of light and shade as being faces.

In psychology and cognitive science, confirmation bias is a tendency to search for or interpret new information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions and to avoid information and interpretations which contradict prior beliefs. It is a type of cognitive bias and represents an error of inductive inference, or as a form of selection bias toward confirmation of the hypothesis under study or disconfirmation of an alternative hypothesis.

In plain English if you believe in ghosts you tend to look for ghosts to explain the unexplained. There are several possible reasons that beliefs persevere despite contrary evidence. Embarrassment over having to withdraw a publicly declared belief, for example, or stubbornness or hope. Tradition, superstition, religion, worldview, or ideology can allow a believer to give a greater weight to some data over other data.

One explanation may lie in the workings of the human sensory system. Human brains and senses are organised in such a manner so as to facilitate rapid evaluation of social situations and others' states of mind. Studies have shown that this behaviour is evident in the choosing of friends and partners and houses even though it is largely subconscious. Although it can be a very fast process the initial impression has a lasting effect as a byproduct of the brain's tendency to fill in the gaps of what it perceives and the unwillingness of the believer to admit a mistake.