January 19th, 2015

Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon, and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse. Pareidolia is a type of apophenia (unmotivated seeing of connections). Carl Sagan hypothesized that as a survival technique, human beings are “hard-wired” from birth to identify the human face.