mteb/BrightProPsychologyRetrieval huggingface dataset:
Religion  Further information:  Perceptions of religious imagery in natural phenomena

There have been many instances of perceptions of religious imagery and themes,
especially the faces of religious figures, in ordinary phenomena. Many involve
images of  Jesus  ,  [26]  the  Virgin Mary
 ,  [40]  the word 
Allah  ,  [41]  or other religious phenomena: in
September 2007 in  Singapore  , for example, a
 callus  "Callus \(cell biology\)") on a tree
resembled a  monkey  , leading believers to pay
homage to the "Monkey god" (either  Sun Wukong  or  Hanuman  ) in the monkey tree
phenomenon.  [42]

Publicity surrounding sightings of religious figures and other surprising
images in ordinary objects has spawned a market for such items on online
auctions like  eBay  . One famous instance was a grilled
cheese sandwich with the face of the Virgin Mary.  [43]

During the  September 11 attacks  , television viewers supposedly saw the face of  Satan
 in clouds of smoke billowing out of the  World Trade
Center  "World Trade Center
\(1973–2001\)") after it was struck by  the airplane
 .  [44]
Another example of face recognition pareidolia originated in the  fire at
Notre Dame Cathedral  , when a few observers claimed to see Jesus in the flames.  [45]

While attempting to validate the imprint of a  crucified  man on the  Shroud of Turin  as  Jesus Christ  , a variety of objects have
been described as being visible on the  linen  . These
objects include a number of plant species, a coin with  Roman numerals
 , and multiple insect species.  [46]
In an experimental setting using a picture of plain linen cloth, participants
told that there could possibly be visible words in the cloth collectively saw
2 religious words, those told that the cloth was of some religious importance
saw 12 religious words, and those who were also told that it was of religious
importance, but also given suggestions of possible religious words, saw 37
religious words.  [47]  The researchers posit that the reason the Shroud has
been said to have so many different symbols and objects is because it was
already deemed to have the imprint of  Jesus Christ 
prior to the search for symbols and other imprints in the cloth, and therefore
it was simply pareidolia at work.  [46]
The mere-exposure effect posits that repeated exposure to a stimulus increases
 _perceptual fluency_  , the
ease with which a stimulus can be processed. Perceptual fluency, in turn,
increases positive effect.  [13]  [14]  Studies showed that repeated exposure
increases perceptual fluency, confirming positive effect in autobiographical
memory and perceptual learning  [15]  , a finding supported in later studies.
[16]  [17]
picture "Jasper") exhibit combinations of
patterns such as banding from flow or depositional patterns (from water or
wind), or dendritic or color variations, resulting in what appear to be
miniature scenes on a cut section, which is then used for jewelry.

 Chert  nodules,  concretions  , or pebbles may in certain cases be mistakenly identified as
skeletal remains, egg fossils, or other antiquities of organic origin by
amateur enthusiasts.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Japanese researcher  Chonosuke Okamura
 self-published a series of
reports titled _Original Report of the Okamura Fossil Laboratory_ , in which
he described tiny inclusions in polished  limestone  from the  Silurian  period (425 [
mya ](/wiki/Year
Research methods  |
Group pressure  |
---
Basic concepts  |
Conflict  "Conflict \(process\)") |
*  Absent-mindedness 
*  Atkinson–Shiffrin memory model 
*  Context-dependent  and  state-dependent  memory
*  Childhood memory 
*  Exosomatic memory 
*  Free recall 
*  Intermediate-term memory 
*  Involuntary memory 
*  flashbacks  "Flashback \(psychology\)")
*  Levels of Processing model 
*  Metamemory 
*  Muscle memory 
*  Priming  "Priming \(psychology\)")
*  intertrial 
*  Prospective  and  retrospective  memory
* _ The Seven Sins of Memory  _
"Familiarity principle" redirects here. For other uses of 'Familiarity', see 
Familiarity (disambiguation) 
"Familiarity \(disambiguation\)") .
*  Endowment effect 
*  Illusory truth effect 
*  Interpersonal attraction 
*  Propinquity effect 
*  Subliminal advertising
External links  Look up _** pareidolia
 ** _ in Wiktionary, the free
dictionary.

**Pareidolia** at Wikipedia's  sister projects

*   Definitions  from Wiktionary
*   Media  from Commons
*   Data  from Wikidata

*  Skepdic.com  Skeptic's Dictionary definition of pareidolia
*  A Japanese museum of rocks which look like faces 
*  Article in _The New York Times_ , 13 February 2007, about cognitive science of face recognition 

Retrieved from " 
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pareidolia&oldid=1214353499
 "

 Last edited on 18 March 2024, at 12:58
*  Exceptional memory 
*  Indirect tests of memory 
*  Memory disorder
##  Example 1 – Finance and domestic investment
###  Zajonc (1960s–1990s)  ")
]
*  Asch conformity experiments 
*  Breaching experiment 
*  Milgram experiment 
*  Stanford prison experiment
|   Sensory  |
See also  *  Clustering illusion 
*  Eigenface 
*  Hitler teapot 
* _ Madonna of the Toast  _
*  Mondegreen 
*  Musical ear syndrome  – similar to auditory pareidolia, but with hearing loss
*  Optical illusion 
*  Perceptions of religious imagery in natural phenomena 
*  Signal-to-noise ratio
1 Follower
*  HM 
*  KC 
*  NA 
*  Clive Wearing
*  Attachment theory 
*  Falling in love 
* Mere-exposure effect
*  Similarity  "Similarity \(psychology\)")
*  Physical attractiveness 
*  Triangular theory of love 
*  Parenting style 
*  Divorce 
*  Adoption
Forgetting  |
####  May 6, 2020
###  Successful brokerage isn't a game
---|---
Governmental pressure  |
*  Encoding  "Encoding \(memory\)")
*  Storage  "Storage \(memory\)")
*  Recall  "Recall \(memory\)")
---|---
 Short-term  |
*  Memory sport 
*  World Memory Championships 
*  Shas Pollak
Etymology  The word derives from the Greek words _ pará
 _ (  παρά  , "beside,
alongside, instead [of]") and the noun  _eídōlon_
 (  εἴδωλον  , "image, form, shape").  [5]

The German word  _Pareidolie_ was used in articles by  Karl Ludwig Kahlbaum
 —for example in his 1866
paper "  _Die Sinnesdelierien_ "  [6]  ("On Delusion of the Senses"). When
Kahlbaum's paper was reviewed the following year (1867) in _The Journal of
Mental Science_ , Volume 13,  _Pareidolie_ was translated into English as
"pareidolia", and noted to be synonymous with the terms "...changing
hallucination, partial hallucination, [and] perception of secondary images."
[7]
*  Bystander effect 
*  Prosocial behavior 
*  Reciprocal altruism 
*  Negative-state relief model 
*  Empathy-altruism 
*  Cooperation 
*  Prisoner's dilemma
###  Demetrios Zamboglou PhD
Learn More __ ](/biases/availability-heuristic)
* "  The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two  "
*  Working memory
##  Related TDL article
The scholar best known for developing the mere-exposure effect is  Robert
Zajonc  . Before conducting his
research, he observed that exposure to a novel stimulus initially elicits a
fear/avoidance response in all organisms. Each subsequent exposure to the
novel stimulus causes less fear and more interest in the observing organism.
After repeated exposure, the observing organism will begin to react fondly to
the once novel stimulus. This observation led to the research and development
of the mere-exposure effect.  [4]
###  Zola–Morgan (2001)  ") ]
*  Jonathan Hancock 
*  Paul R. McHugh 
*  Dominic O'Brien 
*  Ben Pridmore 
*  Cosmos Rossellius 
*  Andriy Slyusarchuk
---
 Interpersonal relationships  |
Memory errors  |
*  Violence 
*  Deindividuation 
*  Anonymity 
*  Frustration-aggression hypothesis
Charles Goetzinger conducted an experiment using the mere-exposure effect on
his class at  Oregon State University  . Goetzinger had a student come to class in a large black
bag with only his feet visible. The black bag sat on a table in the back of
the classroom. Goetzinger's experiment was to observe if the students would
treat the black bag in accordance to Zajonc's mere-exposure effect. His
hypothesis was confirmed. The students in the class first treated the black
bag with hostility, which over time turned into curiosity, and eventually
friendship.  [4]  This experiment confirms Zajonc's mere-exposure effect, by
simply presenting the black bag over and over again to the students their
attitudes were changed, or as Zajonc states "mere repeated exposure of the
individual to a stimulus is a sufficient condition for the enhancement of his
attitude toward it."  [4]
Undo  ` `
Long-term  |
Social influence  |
*  Richard C. Atkinson 
*  Robert A. Bjork 
*  Stephen J. Ceci 
*  Susan Clancy 
*  Hermann Ebbinghaus 
*  Sigmund Freud 
*  Patricia Goldman-Rakic 
*  Ivan Izquierdo 
*  Marcia K. Johnson 
*  Eric Kandel 
*  Elizabeth Loftus 
*  Geoffrey Loftus 
*  James McGaugh 
*  Eleanor Maguire 
*  George Armitage Miller 
*  Brenda Milner 
*  Lynn Nadel 
*  Henry L. Roediger III 
*  Daniel Schacter 
*  Richard Shiffrin 
*  Arthur P. Shimamura 
*  Larry Squire 
*  Susumu Tonegawa 
*  Anne Treisman 
*  Endel Tulving 
*  Robert Stickgold
Literature  This section **needs expansion** . You can help by  adding to it

.  _( October 2022  ) _

---

Renaissance authors have shown a particular interest in pareidolia. In 
William Shakespeare  's play
_ Hamlet  _ , for example, the titular character
points at the sky and "demonstrates" his supposed madness in this exchange
with  Polonius  :  [29]  [30]

> HAMLET
>  Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in the shape of a camel?
>  POLONIUS
>  By th'Mass and 'tis, like a camel indeed.
>  HAMLET
>  Methinks it is a weasel.
>  POLONIUS
>  It is backed like a weasel.
>  HAMLET
>  Or a whale.
>  POLONIUS
>  Very like a whale.

 Nathaniel Hawthorne  wrote
a short story called _The Great Stone Face_ in which a face seen in the side
of a mountain is revered by a village.  [31]
Auditory  In 1971  Konstantīns Raudive  wrote _Breakthrough_ , detailing what he believed was the discovery
of  electronic voice phenomena  (EVP). EVP has been described as auditory
pareidolia.  [26]  Allegations of  backmasking  in popular music, in which a listener claims a message has been
recorded backward onto a track meant to be played forward, have also been
described as auditory pareidolia.  [26]  [49]  In 1995, the psychologist 
Diana Deutsch  invented an algorithm for
producing phantom words and phrases with the sounds coming from two stereo
loudspeakers, one to the listener's left and the other to his right, producing
a phase offset in time between the speakers. After listening for a while,
phantom words and phrases suddenly emerge, and these often appear to reflect
what is on the listener's mind.  [50]  [51]
##  Example 2 – Journal ranking in academia
Learn More __ ](/biases/action-bias) [
###  Other areas
Memes_and_Mods "Among
Us")

 Many  internet
memes  about _ Among Us
 _ exploit pareidolia, by showing everyday items
that look similar to crewmates from the game.

In January 2017, an anonymous user placed an  eBay 
auction of a  Cheeto  that looked like the gorilla 
Harambe  . Bidding began at   US$
 11.99  , but the Cheeto
was eventually sold for  US$99,000  .  [56]

Starting from 2021, an  internet meme 
emerged around _ Among Us  _ , where users
presented everyday items such as dogs, statues, garbage cans, big toes, and
pictures of the  Boomerang Nebula  that looked like the game's "crewmate" protagonists.  [57]  [58]  In
May 2021, an  eBay  user named Tav listed a  Chicken
McNugget  shaped like a crewmate
from _Among Us_ for  online auction 
. The Chicken McNugget was sold for  US$99,997  to an anonymous buyer.  [59]
Demetrios Zamboglou PhD
*  Compliance  "Compliance \(psychology\)")
*  Communal reinforcement 
*  Countersignaling 
*  Creeping normality 
*  Herd behavior 
*  Internalization  "Internalization \(sociology\)")
*  Normalization of deviance 
*  Obedience  "Obedience \(human behavior\)")
*  Preference falsification 
*  Social proof 
*  Social reality
#  Behavioural tendencies: Familiarity bias
Architecture  Illusory woman
in the Niğde Alaaddin Mosque portal

Two 13th-century edifices in Turkey display architectural use of shadows of
stone carvings at the entrance. Outright pictures are avoided in Islam but
tessellations and calligraphic pictures were allowed, so designed "accidental"
silhouettes of carved stone tessellations became a creative escape.

*  Niğde Alaaddin Mosque  in  Niğde  , Turkey (1223), with its "mukarnas" art where the shadows of three-dimensional ornamentation with stone masonry around the entrance form a  chiaroscuro  drawing of a woman's face with a crown and long hair appearing at a specific time, at some specific days of the year.  [36]  [37]  [38]
*  Divriği Great Mosque and Hospital  in  Sivas  , Turkey (1229), shows shadows of the three-dimensional ornaments of both entrances of the mosque part, to cast a giant shadow of a praying man that changes pose as the sun moves, as if to illustrate what the purpose of the building is. Another detail is the difference in the impressions of the clothing of the two shadow-men indicating two different styles, possibly to tell who is to enter through which door.  [39]
##  Perceptual fluency
A  meta-analysis  of 208 experiments
found that the mere-exposure effect is  robust  and  reliable 
"Reliability \(psychometrics\)") , with an  effect size  of _r_ =0.26. This analysis found that the effect is strongest
when unfamiliar stimuli are presented briefly. Mere exposure typically reaches
its maximum effect within 10–20 presentations, and some studies even show that
liking may decline after a longer series of exposures. For example, people
generally like a song more after they have heard it a few times, but many
repetitions can reduce this preference. A delay between exposure and the
measurement of liking actually tends to increase the strength of the effect.
The effect is weaker on children, and for drawings and paintings as compared
to other types of stimuli.  [9]  One social psychology experiment showed that
exposure to people we initially dislike makes us dislike them even more.  [10]
* _ Damnatio memoriae  _
*  Dissident 
*  Exile 
* _ Homo sacer  _
*  Nonperson 
*  Ostracism 
*  Blacklisting 
*  Cancel culture 
*  Censorship 
*  Deplatforming 
*  Outcast  "Outcast \(person\)")
*  Outlaw 
*  Civil death 
* _ Vogelfrei  _
* _ Persona non grata  _
*  Public enemy 
*  Enemy of the people 
*  Enemy of the state 
*  Scapegoating 
*  Shunning
Human memory
– Economist Gur Huberman
*  Explanatory style 
*  Counterfactual thinking 
*  Framing effect 
*  Confirmation bias 
*  Observer-expectancy effect 
*  Heuristic 
*  Representative heuristic 
*  Availability heuristic 
*  Fundamental attribution error 
*  Self-serving bias
In the 1960s, a series of  Robert Zajonc  's laboratory experiments demonstrated that simply exposing
participants to a familiar  stimulus 
"Stimulus \(physiology\)") led them to rate it more positively than other,
similar stimuli that had not been presented before.  [4]  At first, Zajonc
looked at language and the frequency of words used. He found that overall
positive words were used more than their negative counterparts.  [4]  Later,
he showed similar results for liking, pleasantness, and  forced-choice
measures  from a variety of stimuli, such as
polygons, drawings, photographs of expressions, nonsense words, and 
idiographs  .  [5]
Anticonformity  "Anticonformity
\(psychology\)") |
*  Echoic 
*  Eidetic 
*  Eyewitness 
*  Haptic 
*  Iconic 
*  Motor learning 
*  Visual
Help improve contributions
*  Articles with short description 
*  Short description is different from Wikidata
*  Prejudice 
*  Stereotype 
*  Outgroup homogeneity 
*  Stereotype threat 
*  Implicit association test 
*  Minimal group paradigm 
*  Realistic conflict theory 
*  Discrimination 
*  Social dominance orientation
False memory  |
#  Mere Exposure Effect
##  What is the Mere Exposure Effect?
##  Application
In 1980, Zajonc proposed the affective primacy hypothesis: that  affective
reactions  "Affect \(psychology\)") (such as
liking) can be "elicited with minimal stimulus input." Through mere-exposure
experiments, Zajonc sought to provide evidence for the affective-primacy
hypothesis, namely that affective judgments are made without prior cognitive
processes. He tested this hypothesis by presenting repeated stimuli to
participants at suboptimal thresholds such that they did not show conscious
awareness or recognition of the repeated stimuli (when asked whether they had
seen the image, responses were at chance level), but continued to show
affective bias toward the repeatedly exposed stimuli. Zajonc compared results
from primes exposed longer, which allowed for conscious awareness, to stimuli
shown so briefly that participants did not show conscious awareness. He found
that the primes shown more briefly and not recognized prompted faster
responses for liking than primes shown at conscious levels.  [5]  [6]
Deliberate practical use
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Mya "Year") ) as being preserved  fossil  remains of tiny humans, gorillas, dogs, dragons, dinosaurs and other
organisms, all of them only millimeters long, leading him to claim, "There
have been no changes in the bodies of mankind since the Silurian period...
except for a growth in stature from 3.5 mm to 1,700 mm."  [16]  [17]
Okamura's research earned him an  Ig Nobel Prize  (a parody of the Nobel Prizes) in  biodiversity
 in 1996.  [18]  [19]

Some sources describe various mimetolithic features on  Pluto  , including a  heart-shaped region  .  [20]  [21]  [22]

Seeing shapes in cloud patterns is another example of this phenomenon.
Rogowitz and Voss (1990) showed a relationship between seeing shapes in cloud
patterns and  fractal  dimension. They varied the
fractal dimension of the boundary contour from 1.2 to 1.8, and found that the
lower the fractal dimension, the more likely people were to report seeing
namable shapes of animals, faces, and fantasy creatures.  [23]
#  Mere-exposure effect
##  Research
*  Confabulation 
*  Cryptomnesia 
*  Hindsight bias 
*  Imagination inflation 
*  Memory biases 
*  Memory conformity 
*  Misattribution of memory 
*  Misinformation effect 
*  Source-monitoring error
---|---
Patients  |
###  Advertising
The **mere-exposure effect** is a  psychological  phenomenon by which people tend to develop liking or
disliking for things merely because they are familiar with them. In  social
psychology  , this effect is
sometimes called the **familiarity principle** . The effect has been
demonstrated with many kinds of things, including words,  Chinese characters
 , paintings, pictures of faces,
 geometric figures  , and sounds.  [1]  In studies
of interpersonal attraction, the more often people see a person, the more
pleasing and likeable they find that person.
*   Psychology portal 
*   Philosophy portal
####  Mar 11, 2019
Medical education, radiology images  Cross-section of male  nematode  worm _ Ascaris
 _

Medical educators sometimes teach medical students and resident physicians
(doctors in training) to use pareidolia and patternicity to learn to recognize
human anatomy on radiology imaging studies.

Examples include assessing radiographs (X-ray images) of the human vertebral
spine. Patrick Foye, M.D., professor of  physical medicine and rehabilitation
 at  Rutgers University  ,  New Jersey Medical School  , has written that pareidolia is used to teach
medical trainees to assess for spinal fractures and spinal malignancies
(cancers).  [52]  When viewing spinal radiographs, normal bony anatomic
structures resemble the face of an owl. (The spinal pedicles resemble an owl's
eyes and the spinous process resembles an owl's beak.) But when cancer erodes
the bony spinal pedicle, the radiographic appearance changes such that now
that eye of the owl seems missing or closed, which is called the "winking owl
sign". Another common pattern is a "Scottie dog sign" on a spinal X-ray.  [53]

In 2021, Foye again published in the medical literature on this topic, in a
medical journal article called "Baby Yoda: Pareidolia and Patternicity in
Sacral MRI and CT Scans".  [54]  Here, he introduced a novel way of
visualizing the  sacrum  when viewing MRI  magnetic
resonance imaging  and  CT scans  (computed tomography
scans). He noted that in certain image slices the human sacral anatomy
resembles the face of "Baby Yoda" (also called  Grogu 
), a fictional character from the television show _ The Mandalorian
 _ . Sacral openings for exiting
nerves (sacral foramina) resemble Baby Yoda's eyes, while the sacral canal
resembles Baby Yoda's mouth.  [55]
*  Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm 
*  False memory syndrome 
*  Memory implantation 
*  Lost in the mall technique 
*  Recovered-memory therapy
16 languages
*  العربية  
*  Deutsch  
*  Eesti  
*  Español  
*  فارسی  
*  Français  
*  한국어  
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Psychological process
Psychological reactance  theory is an alternative explanation for ironic process phenomena.
[22]  This theory suggests that humans have an innate need for freedom, and
that when their autonomy is threatened they experience an unpleasant emotional
arousal – _reactance_ . Reactive thoughts and behaviours arise to guard their
autonomy against the threat. In the case of the white bear experiment,
participants felt a loss of freedom when they were asked not to think of a
white bear. They then thought of the bear even more to reestablish their
autonomy.  [9]
](/grammar/the-tangled-history-of-its-and-its)
##  Earlier references
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They can be tough to pin down
#####   Why do you remember things when you stop trying to?
More Commonly Mispronounced Words
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#  'Elude' and 'Allude'
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##  Alternative
'Canceled' or 'Cancelled'?
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###  More Commonly Mispronounced Words
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help in the avoidance of unwanted thoughts.
###  'Deduction' vs. 'Induction' vs. 'Abduction'
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