We can sometimes see more than really is there

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Wikipedia page says:

 

“Pareidolia is the tendency for perception to impose a meaningful interpretation on a nebulous stimulus, usually visual, so that one detects an object, pattern, or meaning where there is none.”

 

There is a brief article by Dr. Alice Pailhes on April 21, 2025 titled Why We See Faces in Random Places: How our brain turns randomness into meaning. And another article by Phil Plait at Scientific American on June 28, 2024 is titled The Face on Mars and Other Cases of Cosmic Pareidolia.

 

The happy potato face by Andy Mabbett came from Wikimedia Commons.   

 

 

Is the man at the right in this 1670 painting holding an iPhone or just a letter?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an article in The U.S. Sun by Jacob Bentley-York on October 7, 2022 titled More ‘proof’ time travel is REAL as ‘iPhone’ is spotted in 350-year-old painting in Amsterdam museum. But, as shown above in the painting by Pieter de Hooch, the man is more likely just holding a letter in an envelope. Thinking it’s an iPhone is an example of pareidolia, which the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines as:

 

“the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern.”

 

An earlier article about Tim Cook in the New York Magazine – Intelligencer by Madison Malone Kircher on May 25, 2016 is titled Apple CEO loves iPhones so much he saw one in this 300-year-old painting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It got mentioned again after a second article in The U.S. Sun on October 4, 2022 by Olivia Burke titled THY-PHONE ‘Time traveler’ woman seen holding an iPhone in 150-year-old painting, viewers claim – but experts have a simple answer. As shown above, in that painting her hands more likely are holding a pocket-sized prayer book.

 

The joy of pareidolia

People are skilled at finding patterns. Sometimes we find patterns that are not even there. Pareidolia is a recent word for the erroneous or fanciful perception of a pattern or meaning in something that is actually ambiguous or random, like the “man in the moon” or a soapy constellation. You need to be clear when you create graphics for a presentation, or else people just will fill in the blanks.

We are wonderful at finding human faces, both in profile and looking straight at us. Part of the brain even is dedicated to perceiving faces. It is called the fusiform face area. All it takes to get us started is areas that suggest eyes and a mouth, like this pan shown here by Phil Plait, which suggests the Stay Puft marshmallow man. Plait’s blog has a category devoted to examples of pareidolia.

Shane Killian has a three-part Bogosity video series about pareidolia for both sight and sound. Adam Buxton gives humorous video examples here and here of how reading mangled subtitles can bias the understanding of lyrics from religious songs.