Pareidolia. I love it. You know when Jesus appears in a KitKat Chunky or a taco? Pareidolia. When the Virgin Mary appears in a mouldy grape? Pareidolia. One of the most famous examples is the Face on Mars, loved by conspiracy theorists and morons everywhere, photographed by Viking 1 in 1976. A quick Google search will reveal an infinite number of examples and you would be unlikely to have to watch more than a few weeks of breakfast 'news' before yet another example presented itself.
So what exactly is pareidolia? Well, it is most commonly used to describe instances where we see faces where there really isn't one but it is defined more broadly as the psychological phenomenon when a vague or random stimulus is perceived as being significant. This can be a visual or auditory phenomenon. Today, when I was slurping up my chocolate milk (because I'm an adult), I saw this little dude looking back at me out of the bowl; I took a quick snap and then proceeded to devour his handlebar mustachioed face. If I'd wanted to, I could try to ascribe some sort of meaning to this random pattern; maybe a premonition of good luck, or of meeting someone new, even a sign of my impending death - people will believe anything.
But why do we do this? Why would our brain be so cruel as to trick us like this? It's difficult to say exactly as this would lead us into the realm of evolutionary psychology, which isn't really science as it doesn't make falsifiable hypotheses, which leaves it languishing somewhere between philosophy and idle speculation. The leading theory, though, is that human babies that could quickly and easily recognise human faces had an evolutionary advantage over their not so canny cousins. This seems reasonable. It has been shown many times that very young neonates can involuntarily smile upon being presented with a face, even though they don't know what a smile is nor, indeed, a face. The theory goes that parents that see their little one smiling back at them will be endeared towards it and take better care of it. Again, this doesn't seem entirely implausible; at a time in human evolution when raising a child was a truly huge undertaking requiring a massive drain on resources, you can imagine this conferring an advantage over some poor mite that had inherited an unfortunate scowl from grumpy grandad Jack.
Below is a picture of three circles and a straight line, but I would put good money on every single one of you seeing a face. You can't help it. It's hard wired. In fact, if you couldn't see a face then you should get yourself signed up to some experiments because psychologists and neurologists will absolutely love you.
The human brain is still the greatest, most accomplished pattern-recognition machine in the known universe. Unfortunately we have evolved in an environment where false positives carry less disadvantage than false negatives and so the brain can ascribe significance where there is none; this isn't a problem so long as we're aware of it and don't blindly follow our first instincts. Keep your eyes open, folks, who knows what you might see.
