Ironic Icons

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The Annals of Improbable Research every year offer up the Ignobel Prize for research that is bound to raise a condescending smile from the perspicacious. Ever practical Americans are given a bemused nod by the European for taking on the stranger side of science. This year’s Ignobel went to a group studying why banana peels are slippery, but a BBC Science and Environment report also mentioned a study of the phenomenon of pareidolia. For many years I have found the tendency to see faces where they don’t exist—signal amid the noise—to be closely tied with religious evolution. (The book that started me down this path was Stewart Guthrie’s Faces in the Clouds.) Indeed, the BBC reports the group was investigating the brains of those who see Jesus and other specific figures on toast and other venues of visual “white noise.” Not surprisingly, they found that the figure seen often relates to the religion of the viewer. Buddha gets around as much as Jesus does.

Ironically, many religions, particularly in the monotheistic mold, tend to find images problematic. According to the Bible, the true believer would not make or seek images at all. The great iconoclasm clash in late antique Christianity was, at least in part, a dispute over the role of images. Anyone who keeps an eye on the religious news knows that images of Mohammad are a particularly touchy subject. The Ignobel awards may not be the best place to look for explanations, but the University of Toronto team found that the function of finding faces is pre-human and is hardwired into our brains. Seeing Jesus or Buddha before Jesus or Buddha were born? Creatures with faces evolved the knack to identify faces.

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But why religious faces? The report on the BBC doesn’t go into that level of detail, but it is the salient point. Finding faces makes sense. Why we find religious faces is far more interesting. Guthrie suggests this might be the origin of religion itself—first we see the faces and then we give them names. We see what we expect to see. And maybe the religious tend to expect an epiphany more readily than the non-religious. The non-religious less seldom report seeing such faces. Indeed, the word pareidolia is still generally eschewed since it admits of one of those things we find somewhat embarrassing about being human. And yet it happens to us all. The face staring back at you from your morning toast may not be Jesus, but chances are that face will be religious.

Random Faces

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A friend recently sent me an issue of the Annals of Improbable Research that featured an instance of pareidolia on the back cover. Pareidolia, or the brain’s tendency to read patterns in random input – especially faces or human forms, has been a subject addressed on this blog before. Nevertheless, the phenomenon has continued to find wider exposure on the internet, and its implications continue to grow. The Cheezburger folks who brought us LOL Cats now have a site dedicated to pareidolia entitled “Happy Chair is Happy.” The question is not so much why we see faces everywhere, but what do we do about it.

Photo credit: C. Vittore, K. Tribble and D. Savala, Ann. Improbable Research

Perhaps the most prevalent uses of pareidolia in natural phenomena (human-made objects are often funny or uncanny, but the faces may be there by intentional design) revolve around the supernatural. Would-be ghost hunters find what looks like a face in a window or shadowy corner and interpret it as a disembodied spirit. Religious believers of various faiths find the faces of their founders or leaders in natural noise. A tract I saw as a child told the heart-wrenching story of a woman who’d given up hope. She randomly took a photograph of her garden and when she developed it (this was back when film was actually still in use), she found the face of Jesus in among the leaves. Her angst alleviated, she went on to face life with a fresh sense of possibilities.

We often see what is not really there. On a visit to my niece last year, while waiting in the car outside her dorm, I saw a shadow on the wall that looked exactly like the recently deceased Michael Jackson. The shadow was cast by security lights through a bush, but the face was unmistakable. To test my observation, I asked my niece – who knew nothing of the fleeting rock star on the side of her building – if she could see it. Immediately it became obvious to her. An epiphany of Michael Jackson may be a religious event, or at least a supernatural one, to some. In reality it was a temporary arrangement of leaves aligned just right to catch a security light to form a public icon. Putting faith in pareidolia is a very haphazard source of security. However, if it helps someone deal with the stresses and strains of life, what harm is there in seeing Jesus (or Michael Jackson) where he really isn’t present?