Pareidolia and Confirmation Bias: the fuel the internet runs on

It’s amazing how little we need to recognize a face. Check out this great American Express commercial to see what I mean:

Two dots and a line and we are convinced that there’s a little representation of a human in front of us. Suddenly something that was inanimate becomes animate, complete with an emotional state and an opinion towards us.

But it’s not just faces. We have been looking up at the stars and spotting strange creatures since we had speech.  And who hasn’t seen strange patterns in the knots of a gnarled old tree ? And of course there is the annual appearance of a religious figure in a piece of toasted wheat-project, as regular as Christmas music in December.

The psychological phenomena of seeing significance and patterns in vague or random stimulus is known as Pareidolia (or apophenia) and is responsible for everything from the “face on Mars” to the backlash against satanic messages in rock music (that are only heard when played backwards of course). It’s the tendency of the brain to impose patterns on chaos, to project what we’re thinking about and looking for on everything that comes in contact with us.

Seeing religious imagery in particular goes by another name: simulacra. Simulacra isn’t only a phenomena of the western world, people seeing the Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich or on a fence in Australia. Religions the world over see religious patterns in the world around them.  In the Muslim world the script for Allah appears in the scales of fish while in Jurong West New Town in Singapore a tree broke out in calluses that look like the monkey god Hanuman. 

In fact the phenomenon is so common that psychologists have been using it for years in order to get a better understanding of people’s minds.  Particularly with the Rorschach inkblot test. The inkblots involved in the Rorschach test are purposefully not suppose to resemble anything at all so any patterns that people see in them are nothing more than a construction of their own imaginations projected onto the cards.

Paredolia is enough of a common circumstance that it seems to be hardwired directly into our brains. But why? What purpose does it serve? Is it just a flaw or is it something more?

Historically, pattern recognition could be the difference between living and dying if it allowed someone to spot predators hiding in the bushes. And Carl Sagan theorized that our ability to see faces in particular stems from our need to be able to recognize people from a distance with minimal details, allowing us to determine if the person coming over the hill was a bandit out to attack us or our dear aunt bringing us a cake.

Pareidolia is even more likely to occur when a person consciously tries to detect a pattern, as is the case for someone looking for a sign that they are on the right path or listening for intelligible phrases in backwards speech. For example listen to this:

Sounds like meaningless machine gibbering, right? What if I were to tell you that that meaningless noise was actually this:

Listen to the first noise again. Now you can’t unhear it, right?*

The problem is that human beings are easily susceptible to suggestion, and when someone tells you that this:

looks like Jesus, well maybe you take a few more moments to piece it together. But once you see the pattern and you feel that rush of recognition it becomes incredibly difficult not to see Jesus in the rock. In fact, whenever someone tells you that you’re being silly you’re going to argue with them, going to try to make them see the pattern.

Sound familiar?

When our minds think that they’ve figured something out, whether it’s a pattern or a lie, it’s very difficult for us to convince them that they’re wrong. That feeling of rightness, of finally grasping the pattern, is difficult to argue with logically. In fact, once someone believes something they will even disregard contrary evidence that disproves their idea while taking note of evidence that is in line with their theories. It’s called confirmation bias.

A study done at Ohio State in 2009 showed that participants spent 36 percent more time reading articles that agreed with their point of view than those that challenged their beliefs and many didn’t read any opposing view articles at all.. But while it makes sense that you might enjoy reading things that agree with your worldview the problem with confirmation bias is that it tends to go deeper than that. Not only will people consciously choose to listen to opinions that they agree with, closing themselves off to a possibly more logical train of thought, they also selectively remember and interpret evidence in a biased way.** And when it comes to ambiguous data it is all interpreted to fall in line with your beliefs.

One interesting look at this was also done at Ohio State University, although back in 2006. This study, run by Heather LaMarre, Kristen Landreville and Michael Beam, showed 322 different participants of varying political beliefs a Stephen Colbert video clip and asked to rate how liberal Colbert was. Surprisingly, while more liberal participants ranked Colbert as more liberal more conservative participants ranked him as more conservative. Truth didn’t matter here. Liberals saw Colbert’s jokes making fun of liberals as satirical, conservatives saw them as fact, but it didn’t make a difference about whether they were satirical or not. The only thing that mattered were the participants own views.

Conspiracy theorists in particular are extremely good at exploiting this tendency of the brain and will often stoop to various fallacious techniques*** to try to get you to agree with their opinion. From an appeal to rebellion (decide whatever you want, but only idiots believe the official story) to citing vague sources (scientists have examined the tape and say that it’s impossible) once you agree with them their job is done.  Your brain will do the rest on its own.

That’s not to say that conspiracy theorists are trying to trick people. They’re not. Most of the time they deeply and truly believe what they are saying but therein lies the problem. Because the more you believe something, the harder your brain is going to work to make sure that you keep believing it.

And the cycle of pareidolia and confirmation bias begin again.

*For more on reverse speech and the place where I got my sound clips from check out the Skeptoid here.

**Great article about confirmation bias here at the Wall Street Journal.

***A better list of all the logical fallacies that tend to be bandied about is here.