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Whether it’s in a cloud, the front of a car, or a grilled $ 28,000 sandwich supposed to look like the Virgin Mary, seeing faces in inanimate objects is a common experience.
According to new research from the University of Sydney, our brains detect and respond emotionally to these illusory faces the same way it does to real human faces.
Facial pareidolia – seeing faces in random objects or patterns of shadow and light – is a daily occurrence. Once considered a symptom of psychosis, it results from a visual perception error.
Lead researcher Professor David Alais, University of Sydney, said human brains are evolutionary wired to recognize faces, with highly specialized brain regions for detecting and processing faces.
“We are such a sophisticated social species and facial recognition is very important,” Alais said. “You have to recognize who it is, is it family, is it a friend or an enemy, what are their intentions and their feelings?
“Faces are detected incredibly quickly. The brain seems to be doing this… using some sort of pattern matching procedure, so if it sees an object that appears to have two eyes above a nose above a mouth, then it says, “Oh , I see a face.
“It’s a bit quick and loose and sometimes it makes mistakes, so something that looks like a face will often trigger this pattern match.”
The researchers showed people a sequence of faces – a mix of real faces and pareidolistic images – and asked participants to rate each facial expression on a scale between anger and joy.
Researchers found that inanimate objects had an emotional priming effect similar to that of real faces.
Photograph: PhotoAlto / Laurence Mouton / Getty Images
“What we found is that, in fact, these pareidolia images are processed by the same mechanism that would normally process the emotions of a real face,” Alais said.
“You are somehow unable to totally turn off that facial response and that emotional response and see it as an object. It remains both an object and a face.
The study may help inform research on artificial intelligence or facial processing disorders such as prosopagnosia, he said.
Previous research co-authored by Alais has shown that by judging a series of faces, a person’s perception of appearance is biased by the previous image shown. “If the previous one was appealing, they valued the current one more attractively,” Alais said.
“It also happens with expression,” he said. “If you see a happy face before, the next face will be slightly happier. “
The latest study was published in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
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