I See FACES

Why do some people see faces in random patterns? Helen Foster set out to learn more about pareidolia

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So far this morning

I have spotted faces in a crumpled piece of clothing and my neighbour’s front door, while my morning cereal was topped by a particularly grumpy-looking slice of banana. And while this might sound a little like I need some kind of intervention, it’s actually a completely normal phenomenon called pareidolia, where people see faces in inanimate objects. But why does it occur?

Frankly, why doesn’t it occur might be a better question. “Being able to spot faces is critical for our survival and our social life,” explains neuroscientist Professor David Alais from the University of Sydney. “We need to quickly recognise friends, enemies, healthy people or unhealthy people and the best way to do this is for the brain to have a simple template, akin to two eyes, a nose and a mouth, for recognising them. Anything that conforms to the template triggers a response from the face processing network in your brain, which then decides if it’s real.”

Facial recognition happens within a few hundred milliseconds, but even when we realise that what we're seeing isn’t actually another human, but say, two windows and a letterbox on a door, Professor Alais’s research found that our brain continues to dwell on the image.

"Simply detecting a face isn't enough for us, it seems we need to read the identity of the face and discern its expression—are they happy, sad, angry, pained—even if it’s not a person,” he explains.