Pareidolia
Pareidolia
Pareidolia (/pærɪˈdoʊliə/ parr-i-DOH-lee-ə) is a psychological phenomenon involving a stimulus (an image or a sound) wherein the mind perceives a familiar pattern where none actually exists.
Etymology
The term 'pareidolia' comes from the Greek words para (παρά, "beside, alongside, instead [of]") and the noun eidōlon (εἴδωλον "image, form, shape"), the diminutive of eidos. Pareidolia was at first used in the 18th century by German physician and physicist Johann Gottfried Zahn to describe the tendency to perceive human faces in inanimate objects.
Definition
Common examples are perceived images of animals, faces, or objects in cloud formations, the Man in the Moon, the Moon rabbit, and hidden messages within recorded music played in reverse or at higher- or lower-than-normal speeds.
Pareidolia can be considered a subcategory of apophenia, which is a more generalized term for seeing patterns in random data. Some common examples are seeing a likeness of Jesus in the clouds or an image of a man on the surface of the moon.
Related Terms
- Apophenia: The human tendency to perceive meaningful patterns within random data.
- Pattern recognition (psychology): The cognitive process that matches information from a stimulus with information retrieved from memory.
- Perception: The organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment.
- Psychology: The scientific study of the human mind and its functions, especially those affecting behavior in a given context.
See Also
External links
- Medical encyclopedia article on Pareidolia
- Wikipedia's article - Pareidolia
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