Pareidolia

Pareidolia is the tendency for perception to impose a meaningful interpretation on a nebulous stimulus, usually visual, so that one sees an object, pattern, or meaning where there is none. Common examples are perceived images of animals, faces, or objects in cloud formations, seeing faces in inanimate objects, or lunar pareidolia like the Man in the Moon or the Moon rabbit.

The Rorschach test is a projective psychological test in which subjects' perceptions of inkblots are recorded and then analyzed using psychological interpretation, complex algorithms, or both. Some psychologists use this test to examine a person's personality characteristics and emotional functioning. It has been employed to detect underlying thought disorder, especially in cases where patients are reluctant to describe their thinking processes openly.[4] The test is named after its creator, Swiss psychologist Hermann Rorschach. The Rorschach can be thought of as a psychometric examination of pareidolia, the active pattern of perceiving objects, shapes, or scenery as meaningful things to the observer's experience, the most common being faces or other pattern of forms that are not present at the time of the observation. In the 1960s, the Rorschach was the most widely used projective test.

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Paradigmatic Duck/Rabbit a la Thomas Kuhn (“The structure of scientific revolutions”)

Image source: https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/pareidolia.htm

The word is derived from the Greek words para, meaning something faulty, wrong, instead of, and the noun eidōlon, meaning image, form or shape. Pareidolia is a type of apophenia, which is a more generalized term for seeing patterns in random data.

van Prooijen, J. W., Douglas, K. M., & De Inocencio, C.. (2018). Connecting the dots: Illusory pattern perception predicts belief in conspiracies and the supernatural. European Journal of Social Psychology

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.2331
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Zhou, L. F., & Meng, M.. (2020). Do you see the “face”? Individual differences in face pareidolia. Journal of Pacific Rim Psychology

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1017/prp.2019.27
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Palmer, C. J., & Clifford, C. W. G.. (2020). Face Pareidolia Recruits Mechanisms for Detecting Human Social Attention. Psychological Science

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1177/0956797620924814
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Akdeniz, G., Toker, S., & Atli, I.. (2018). Neural mechanisms underlying visual pareidolia processing: An fMRI study. Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences

Plain numerical DOI: 10.12669/pjms.346.16140
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Hamilton, C. A., Matthews, F. E., Allan, L. M., Barker, S., Ciafone, J., Donaghy, P. C., … Thomas, A. J.. (2021). Utility of the pareidolia test in mild cognitive impairment with Lewy bodies and Alzheimer’s disease. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1002/gps.5546
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Abo Hamza, E. G., Kéri, S., Csigó, K., Bedewy, D., & Moustafa, A. A.. (2021). Pareidolia in Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder. Frontiers in Psychiatry

Plain numerical DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2021.746734
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Alais, D., Xu, Y., Wardle, S. G., & Taubert, J.. (2021). A shared mechanism for facial expression in human faces and face pareidolia. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2021.0966
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Akdeniz, G., Gumusyayla, S., Vural, G., Bektas, H., & Deniz, O.. (2020). Changes in face and face pareidolia processing in patients with migraine: an ERP study. Journal of Neurophysiology

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1152/jn.00549.2019
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Abbas, A., & Chalup, S.. (2021). Affective analysis of visual scenes using face pareidolia and scene-context. Neurocomputing

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/j.neucom.2021.01.016
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Taubert, J., Wardle, S. G., Flessert, M., Leopold, D. A., & Ungerleider, L. G.. (2017). Face Pareidolia in the Rhesus Monkey. Current Biology

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2017.06.075
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Liu, J., Li, J., Feng, L., Li, L., Tian, J., & Lee, K.. (2014). Seeing Jesus in toast: Neural and behavioral correlates of face pareidolia. Cortex

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2014.01.013
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Kajiyama, Y., Hattori, N., Nakano, T., Revankar, G. S., Otomune, H., Hashimoto, R., … Mochizuki, H.. (2021). Decreased frontotemporal connectivity in patients with parkinson’s disease experiencing face pareidolia. Npj Parkinson’s Disease

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1038/s41531-021-00237-z
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Akdeniz, G.. (2020). Brain activity underlying face and face pareidolia processing: an ERP study. Neurological Sciences

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1007/s10072-019-04232-4
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Rolf, R., Sokolov, A. N., Rattay, T. W., Fallgatter, A. J., & Pavlova, M. A.. (2020). Face pareidolia in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Research

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/j.schres.2020.01.019
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Göbel, N., Möller, J. C., Hollenstein, N., Binder, A., Oechsner, M., Ide, J., … Müri, R. M.. (2021). Face Perception and Pareidolia Production in Patients With Parkinson’s Disease. Frontiers in Neurology

Plain numerical DOI: 10.3389/fneur.2021.669691
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Mamiya, Y., Nishio, Y., Watanabe, H., Yokoi, K., Uchiyama, M., Baba, T., … Mori, E.. (2016). The pareidolia test: A simple neuropsychological test measuring visual hallucination-like illusions. PLoS ONE

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0154713
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Akdeniz, G., Vural, G., Gumusyayla, S., Bektas, H., & Deniz, O.. (2020). Event-Related Potentials Elicited by Face and Face Pareidolia in Parkinson’s Disease. Parkinson’s Disease

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1155/2020/3107185
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Smailes, D., Burdis, E., Gregoriou, C., Fenton, B., & Dudley, R.. (2020). Pareidolia-proneness, reality discrimination errors, and visual hallucination-like experiences in a non-clinical sample. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1080/13546805.2019.1700789
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Murakami, H., Shiraishi, T., Umehara, T., Omoto, S., Takahashi, M., Motegi, H., … Iguchi, Y.. (2021). Face pareidolia is associated with right striatal dysfunction in drug-naïve patients with Parkinson’s disease. Neurological Sciences

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1007/s10072-021-05238-7
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Caruana, N., & Seymour, K.. (2022). Objects that induce face pareidolia are prioritized by the visual system. British Journal of Psychology

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1111/bjop.12546
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Takahashi, K., & Watanabe, K.. (2013). Gaze cueing by pareidolia faces. I-Perception

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1068/i0617sas
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Wardle, S. G., Paranjape, S., Taubert, J., & Baker, C. I.. (2022). Illusory faces are more likely to be perceived as male than female. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2117413119
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Inagawa, Y., Kanetaka, H., Tsugawa, A., Sakurai, S., Serisawa, S., Shimizu, S., … Hanyu, H.. (2020). Efficacy of Olfactory and Pareidolia Tests Compared With That of Indicative Biomarkers in Diagnosis of Dementia With Lewy Bodies. Frontiers in Neurology

Plain numerical DOI: 10.3389/fneur.2020.540291
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Uchiyama, M., Nishio, Y., Yokoi, K., Hosokai, Y., Takeda, A., & Mori, E.. (2015). Pareidolia in Parkinson’s disease without dementia: A positron emission tomography study. Parkinsonism and Related Disorders

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/j.parkreldis.2015.03.020
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Kato, M., & Mugitani, R.. (2015). Pareidolia in infants. PLoS ONE

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0118539
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Hoback, A. S.. (2019). Relationships between aggressive driving behaviors, demographics and pareidolia. Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/j.trip.2019.100037
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