Pareidolia student

PAREIDOLIAJREF IN THE CLASSROOM

Pareidolia: Do You See What You Think You See?

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S T U D E N T E D I T I O N

DO YOU SEEWHAT YOU THINK YOU SEE?

PAREIDOLIA: DO YOU SEE WHAT YOU THINK YOU SEE?

PAREIDOLIA

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The James Randi Educational Foundation is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1996. Its aim is to promote critical thinking by reaching out to the public and media with reliable information about paranormal and supernatural ideas.

The Foundation’s goals include the following:

• Providing educational resources and grants to educators and students who are working to advance critical thinking and skepticism in their communities.

• Demonstrating to the public and the media, through educational seminars and workshops, the consequences of accepting paranormal and supernatural claims without sufficient evidence.

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• Supporting and conducting scientific research into paranormal claims and publishing the findings online and in skeptic periodicals.

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about the JREF

PAREIDOLIA: DO YOU SEE WHAT YOU THINK YOU SEE? 3

TO THE READER

Back when our ancestors had to watch for big beasties who might jump out of the trees and gobble ‘em up, they had to learn to tell what shadows, light, noises and shapes meant as they mastered the art of survival. Magicians know this, too, and they slip in small hints and suggestions that will mislead the decisions of their audiences… Well, we still tend to invent shapes and patterns where there really are none, and this booklet will lead you around some of the bumps in the road that aren’t there, the eyes, the faces, and the threats we can – and we do – make up so easily.

So here we go – on our very own Yellow Brick Road – where

we’ll see “lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my!” that pop up

because we’re still a bit worried about that funny sound,

but more about those faces…

Oh, my…!

to the reader...

James Randi


INTRODUCTION

introductionHuman beings are not the biggest, strongest, or fastest creatures in the animal kingdom. We do not have the best eyesight, the best hearing, or the best sense of smell. Yet human beings have managed to survive and thrive in a dangerous world. We avoid obstacles and predators, communicate with other humans, and find food, thanks to an extraordinary brain that uses information from all of the senses to figure out the world around us.

The human eye, for example, is a truly amazing organ. It is able to sense light and measure its energy. Yet, the eye cannot see. Seeing is a process of the entire visual system and most of the work is done by the brain.

One common misconception is that our eyes work like cameras, sending pictures to the brain, which then records those pictures along with sounds that enter from our ears. The process is really much more complex than that.

MORE LIKE A PAINTING THAN A PICTURE

In general, your brain wants to identify what is in the world around you so that you can take action to avoid it, interact with it, or ignore it. It tries to make sense of the information it gets from the senses without using more energy than is necessary. This information is limited, so your brain uses past experiences to help the process along. It assumes that the things you encounter are a lot like things that you have encountered in the past.

In other words, what we think we are seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling is only our brain’s best guess about what is out there. Our perceptions of the world are constructed from sensory information, expectations, and memory. They are not reflections of the world, like photographs. They are representations of the world, much like a painting is a representation of a person, object, or scene.

ASK…If the best your brain can do is guess what a shape, object, or scene is, then why is it usually right? How do you think we are we able to figure out what most things are?


HOW WE LEARN TO “SEE”

how we learn to “see”Humans have some abilities which appear to be built-in. For example, newborn infants will stare longer at dots if they are arranged to look like a face (see Figure 1)¹. We also have built-in responses such as fear of sudden, loud sounds, and heights. But we are not born with the ability to fully recognize sounds and objects. Instead, it develops as we experience and interact with our environment. We do not record our experiences like a camera does. Instead, each experience changes the physical landscape of our brain just a little bit.

1. Goren, C. C., Sarty, M., & Wu, P. Y. (1975). Visual following and pattern discrimination of face-like stimuli by newborn infants. Pediatrics, 56(4), 544-549.


HOW WE LEARN TO “SEE”

Imagine a neighborhood with a field of tall grass in the middle. A new school sits on one side of the field and houses on the other side. The first child to walk to school will choose a place to enter the field, perhaps where there is an open gate, and walk in the general direction of the school, but she will have no path to follow. The next child to start in the same place is more likely follow the path of the first child, who mashed the grass down as she walked, than to walk an entirely different path. He may wander a bit, especially if he gets lost in thought, but he will mash the grass down a little more than the child before him and add some changes to the path. As more children start at the same place, they will cover the same ground until there is a well-worn, clear path across the field. You may have seen grassless paths like this at your own school—places where people choose to cut across the lawn instead of following the sidewalk.

Each child who follows that path will find it easier to walk than the child before as less and less grass is in the way. If there are many places to start and many children, the field will be full of paths, crossing, merging, and dividing. Well-used paths will be easier to follow than the paths that only a few children have used.

Sensory information is like a child setting out to walk to school through a field. The closer that information matches with a previous experience, the easier it is for the brain to make sense of it as it follows an established pathway.

These pathways are how experience teaches us “rules of thumb”, called heuristics, which allow us to make quick guesses about what is likely to be out there by recognizing familiar patterns. The more familiar a pattern is to us, the more likely we will recognize it and the less time it will take to do so.

Figure 1: Infants will stare longer at the configuration on the left than they will the right (Goren, Sarty, & Wu, 1975).

ASK…Our brains decide what a shape, object, or sound is by using past experience. How does your brain deal with things that you have never encountered before?


PATTERNS AND MEANING

patterns and meaningWe are so practiced at recognizing patterns that we sometimes go a little overboard. When what we see or hear is unclear, the brain sometimes guesses anyway. This often happens when random or unorganized sounds or objects form familiar patterns simply by chance.

Human beings are social creatures, so faces are very important to us. We “see” them everywhere. The headlights on vehicles look like eyes, don’t they? We see faces so easily that we now express emotions in casual written communication with simple punctuation (e.g., :-) to indicate a smile).

We misidentify patterns in all kinds of objects and sounds, even when we understand that they are a trick of the mind. They can be shocking and amusing, but they are almost always due to the human tendency to perceive vague or random images and sounds as significant or familiar. This tendency is called pareidolia. The most well-known example is the tendency to see meaningful shapes (e.g., ducks or sailboats) in clouds.

Satellite images used to create Google Earth™ and other map programs have revealed a number of interesting shapes carved into sand dunes and other geological features. A gas well at the top of a hill in Alberta, Canada looks just like an ear bud because of the shape of the hill and placement of a road (see Figure 2). Seen from the sky, the hill forms the profile of a person wearing an elaborate headdress and the well is precisely where the ear would be. The road leading up to the well looks like the ear bud cord.

Figure 2: Satellite image of hill in Alberta, Canada, © 2012 Google



In November of 2003, a few years before he would serve as president of the JREF (a role he served from 2008-2009), Bad Astronomy author Phil Plait was stunned to find a face staring back at him from his shower curtain. The pattern of water on the curtain looked so much like Vladimir Lenin that he took a picture of it. In a blog post, he wrote, “I knew instantly it looked like Lenin, and also that it was simply water in the shower curtain. But man, it really looks like Lenin.” Dr. Plait explained why these sightings are not as significant or meaningful as we often think they are.

As an astronomer, Dr. Plait is interested in the patterns that people claimed to see in pictures taken by telescopes and space probes. For example, in 1976 a picture of Mars taken by the Viking 1 spacecraft drew a lot of attention due to what looked like a face in a rock formation (see Figure 4). Many claimed it was evidence of life, perhaps a monument left by ancient Martians. However, much better images were taken in the years that followed and it was clear by 2001 that the formation was not really face-shaped after all (see Figure 5).

Figure 3: Lenin in shower curtain; photo courtesy of Phil Plait

Figure 4: Taken by Viking 1 in 1976 Figure 5: Taken by mars global surveyor (mgs) in 2001. Images courtesy of nasaimages.org



Figure 6: Rorschach inkblots

DOES PAREIDOLIA SAY SOMETHING ABOUT YOU?

More than 100 years ago, a man named Hermann Rorschach developed a test that he believed would allow psychologists to diagnose psychological problems in their patients. He used inkblots, a

technique in which a few drops of ink are place in the middle of a folded piece of paper and allowed to form a shape. Since none of the shapes was created to show anything in particular, Rorschach assumed that the patient would “project” his or her secret inner thoughts in deciding what it most looked like.

Rorschach died in 1922, but his test was widely used in the 1960s and 70s. It has since been discarded because, as

it turns out, interpretations of these images tell us almost nothing about a person’s psychological health. But, the

images are useful for many other things. We can learn a lot about pareidolia from them!

ASK…Today’s computers are capable of identifying some objects and even people. Do you think they see faces in everything, too? Do they experience pareidolia? Why do you/don’t you think so?

try this: Can you make pareidolia happen? The answer is “yes”. You may need to try several times before you have a successful example, but all you need is a sound or image that is similar to something familiar. An easy way to do this is to create inkblots:

1. Fold a piece of thick paper in half and crease it.

2. Unfold the paper and place a few drops of poster paint or oth-er thick pigment (something that will not immediately soak into the paper) onto one side of the paper in a somewhat ran-dom manner, but make sure there is some near the crease.

3. Refold the paper, pressing on the blob of paint. Allow it to spread out in whatever way it goes.

4. Unfold and let dry.


AGENCY AND EXPECTATION

Agency and ExpectationHumans do not just look for patterns; we also automatically look for purpose or meaning in those patterns. Sometimes when people who see a face or other familiar shape in an unusual place, they assume that it was put there by someone or something (an agent) for a reason.

RELIGIOUS IMAGES

Images of Jesus Christ have been thought to appear in everything from snack foods to bird droppings. In 2004, a ten-year-old grilled cheese sandwich sold on eBay for $28,000 because it contained the image of a woman thought to be the Virgin Mary. In 2005, a cinnamon bun that looked strikingly similar to Mother Theresa (now a saint) was stolen from a display case in the coffee shop where it was baked. Many people have traveled great distances and stood in line for hours for a chance to see vague Madonna-shaped figures formed by dripping water, reflections of light, half-melted candles, and knots in tree trunks, even if they have to be turned upside-down.

In each case, there is no credible evidence that anything extraordinary has happened, but the faithful often say that they feel comforted by such things. They believe that God, Jesus Christ, or the spirit of Mary placed the image as a sign that they are watching over the faithful.

MESSAGES FROM THE SPIRIT WORLD

When we expect or want to see or hear something specific, it is much easier to misperceive what we have seen or heard. Some self-identified paranormal investigators (called “ghost hunters”) use a device called a ghost box to record radio signals and other background noise. Their goal is to capture the voices of spirits, extraterrestrials, or other invisible entities.

The box works like a radio that won’t stop scanning, so it picks up static and bits of words or music from broadcast radio and television channels here and there. These bits are almost always misinterpreted by the listener as meaningful. He (or she) may believe that he has heard his own name or the name of a ghost he suspects is present.

When words or phrases are clear, the listener looks for a meaningful context for them, a message that a spirit may be trying to deliver. The ghost hunter expects to find evidence of ghosts, so when his brain is processing the sounds, its best guess will be something that he expects a ghost to say.

Figure 8: Ghost box photo courtesy of Ben Radford

Figure 7: Image of “Jesus”on a piece of toast



Much like those who hear messages from spirits in static and random sounds, many people in the 1970s and 80s heard what they thought where were evil hidden messages in rock music. In fact, several bands were forced to defend themselves in court when messages were discovered in recordings that were played backwards.

Although some artists have used a backward recording technique (sometimes referred to as “backmasking”), almost every accusation of this

kind was groundless. The message the accusers claimed to hear was a form of pareidolia. Information from the senses is processed by the brain using the pathways our experiences have created, ending with our best guesses. The most familiar or most recently experienced words and images will be the best guesses, but if the sensory information is not enough to even form a guess, we will easily accept a suggestion from someone else.

In 1985, psychologists Vokey and Read² demonstrated that we are likely to hear a message in nonsense sounds if someone tells

us what they believe the message says. Since the accusers in many of the “backmasking” cases claimed that the source of the messages was Satan and that religious material was free of such messages, the researchers used a recording of the 23rd Psalm from the Holy Bible. They also chose a passage from the poem “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll because it is meaningless when heard forward. They listened carefully until they found pieces that could be interpreted as something meaningful, if silly. For example, part of the poem played backwards sounds a lot like, “Saw a girl with a weasel in her mouth.”

2. Vokey, J. R. & Read, J. D. (1985). Subliminal messages. American Psychologist, 40(11), 1231-1239.

SATANIC MESSAGES



Participants in the study listened to a passage several times. Then experimenters told participants what they thought it sounded like and played the passage again. For each passage, around 85% of participants heard the same message the experimenter suggested, but more than 80% of those said that they did not hear it until they were told what to listen for.

Once we are told what to expect, the message is often very clear and it is nearly impossible to reverse the effect - the sounds never seem random or unclear again.

Even more common are reports of toys that say things that toys should not say. Every year shocked parents call local news stations, convinced that someone planted messages or profanity in their child’s talking toy. Sometimes the message is obvious, but often the parents need to describe what they heard before others can hear it. Almost always, any unexpected message is completely unintentional, due to imperfections in the toy.

try this:Play a game of “telephone”. This is a game which requires a group of at least five people, but twice that is better.

1. Choose an order for the players (first, second, third, etc.)

2. The first person in the chain must choose a sentence from any book and should not share it with the group.

3. The first person will then whisper the sentence into the ear of the second person once and only once. This is tricky; they must whisper it loud enough for the second person to hear it, but soft enough that nobody else hears it.

4. The second person will then whisper what they heard into the ear of the third, and so on.

5. The last person in the chain must repeat what they heard out loud.

6. The first person will then read the sentence they chose and compare.

What happened? Did the sentence change? This game is usually played to demonstrate how easily communication can break down and misinformation can be spread, but there is more to learn from it. For example, if the sentence changed, was the gist the same? Players usually try to repeat the sentence exactly as they heard it, so they tend to replace any words they did not hear correctly with words that sound similar rather than those that make sense. As a result, the outcome is often hilarious.

What do you see?


PSYCHIC ABILITY, AMAZING COINCIDENCE, OR PAREIDOLIA?

Psychic Ability, Amazing Coincidence, or Pareidolia?Rorschach’s inkblots may not tell us much about your personality or psychological health, but they are still useful. They are a type of ambiguous figure - an image that can be perceived in more than one way. Another type is one that artists create, like the famous reversible image that could be either a vase or two faces, but not both at the same time.

Psychologists use ambiguous figures to study perception and other behavior. Research shows that priming, which involves calling attention to a word or concept, can affect how people interpret these figures. For example, if you spend time looking through your cupboards for something to put flowers in, and then look at the vase/two faces image for the first time, you are more likely to see a vase first. If , however, you have been watching a lot of romance movies, the faces may be more apparent.

Priming is actually a form of suggestion; it creates an expectation of sorts. It can come from someone else or from your own thoughts, but it always makes it easier to see or hear something meaningful in ambiguous images or sounds.

Mentalists, magicians, and psychics have taken advantage of this tendency when they perform what look like impossible feats of mind reading. For example, in the early 1970s, a man named Uri Geller convinced journalist Barbara Walters that, among other things, he had read her mind when she concentrated on a drawing that she had placed in a sealed envelope long before his arrival in the studio that day. She was stunned by how similar his drawing seemed to the one she had kept hidden.

Figure 9: Reversible vase/face image



DID GELLER USE PSYCHIC POWER?

James Randi recreated the stunt for Walters on a later show, but he did not claim to read her mind. Instead, he used what he called “an old magician’s trick”. These require, among other things, some acting skill, but not psychic energy.

Randi says that there are a number of ways that magicians perform this trick, including using mirrors hidden in the magician’s hands to get a glimpse of what the subject is drawing (which is not what he or Geller did in this case). Regardless of the method used, convincing the subject that a crude drawing is an accurate recreation, and the result of psychic energy, can be helped along by pareidolia, priming, and suggestion.

As Geller was drawing, he listed a number of possible things the drawing could represent, from churches to mountains to people. He also noted that it was shaped like the letter M. He threw out guesses until Walters revealed that the drawing was of two people, at which point he stopped adding details to his drawing. He didn’t need to draw or say more; she was already convinced that he had read her mind.

When Randi repeated the trick for Walters, he waited until she had revealed her drawing (a house, sun, and person). He then apologized for being a bad artist and showed his own drawing. It was a close match, but not exact. Randi had gotten a quick glimpse of her drawing (by means he won’t reveal!), but did not copy it exactly so that she would not suspect that he had peeked.

Figure 10: James Randi reveals his copy of Barbara Walters’ drawing



Neither Randi nor Gel ler needed to draw detai led copies. By leading, pr iming, or suggest ing, these showmen were able to convince Walters by drawing l i t t le more than basic shapes. The connect ions suggested by Gel ler and Randi f el t r ight to her because of both pareidol ia and a related human tendency called the Forer Effect³ , (sometimes cal led the Barnum Effect , a f ter the world-f amous showman and huckster, P.T. Bar num, who said, “We’ve got something f or everyone”). In 1948, psychologist Ber tram Forer gave his s tudents a personal i ty test . Then he provided each with an individual prof i le of their individual personal i ty. The s tudents rated the accuracy of the descr ipt ion on a scale of zero to f ive. The average rat ing was higher than f our, yet Forer had not actual ly given the s tudents individual prof i les. Al l o f the s tudents got the same descr ipt ion. I t included statements l ike “Discipl ined and sel f -control led outs ide, you tend to be worr isome and insecure inside” and “Secur i ty is one of your major goals in l i f e”. These s tatements apply to almost everyone.

Like the personality profiles that Forer used, a drawing is easily accepted if it matches a single detail accurately or if it is vague, only capturing basic shapes. Circles can be seen as the sun or moon over a mountain or house, but they could also be the heads of stick figures. Geller’s mention of the letter M is similar to a technique used by people who claim to talk to the dead. They choose a letter like J or M, which are common beginnings of names, then watch how the audience responds until someone makes a connection. M is a particularly good choice because “mother” is meaningful to every person on the planet and parents with children are typical subjects of children’s artwork. So, whatever trickery they used, neither Geller nor Randi needed a lot of information about the pictures they were asked to copy. They mostly needed to think on their feet and make well-timed suggestions.

Once the mind recognizes a pattern, it seems obvious, clear, and difficult to shake off, like the face of Lenin in Phil Plait’s shower curtain or satanic messages in rock music.

3. Forer, B.R. (1949). The fallacy of personal validation: a classroom demonstration of gullibility. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 44, 112-123.

What do you see?


ACTIVITIES

try this: HOW VAGUE CAN YOU BE?

1. Give one of the four photos below to a friend and ask them to rate the accuracy of the following description on a scale of 1 to 10:

“There is green in the distance, like trees or hills. There is a flat area, which is brown or tan. There is also a curved line or arches.”

2. Repeat this process using the other photos, but with different friends. Do this with as many people as possible, and then calculate the average score for each photo.

3. Were the ratings higher or lower than you expected? Were they very different for each photo? If they were not different, why do you think such different photos could fit the same description?

4. Create more descriptions like the one above for the same photos and try it again.


ACTIVITIES

WHAT DO THESE LOOK LIKE TO YOU?People have claimed to see familiar shapes in the following images. What do they look like to you?

Image courtesy of NASAimages.org

Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

©GoogleEarth


GLOSSARY

Agent or Agency A person, spirit, or other purposeful force that causes something to appear or occur.

Ambiguous Figure An image that may be interpreted in more than one way. “Ambiguous” refers to information that is unclear.

Barnum Effect See “Forer Effect”.

Forer Effect A tendency for people to rate sets of general statements as highly accurate for them personally when such statements apply to most people.

Ghost Box A device that randomly samples radio signals in small intervals. Some paranormal investigators claim that the sampling process is controlled by spirits to allow them to communicate with the living.

Heuristic A rule of thumb that helps people to quickly identify objects or sounds and to make decisions.

Pareidolia A tendency to perceive meaningful shapes or messages in random or ambiguous images or sounds.

Priming Exposure to a concept or thought that increases the likelihood that it or a similar concept will come to mind in response to a prompt. For example, if you are in the market for a specific new car, you may think that there are suddenly more of those cars on the road than there were before because you are more likely to notice them.

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