Why Do We See Faces When We Look at Objects?

The famous “face” on Mars or The squirrel face we see on the tap… Do you think it’s a coincidence that we see faces in objects? Scientists have investigated the cause of this interesting phenomenon.

This phenomenon is called “facial pareidolia” and is our brain’s perception of objects. renders like real faces quite successful.

Why are our brains so good at seeing faces?

Scientists from the University of Sydney investigated the reason behind seeing faces in objects. Our brain is the world we encounter in daily life. Because it has to recognize faces quickly, It uses a similar mechanism for objects.

The lead author of the study, Dr. David Alais explains this situation as follows: “We are very advanced We are a social species and facial recognition is very important to us. “We need to detect faces quickly to understand whether a person is family, friend or foe, and to decipher their intentions and emotions.”

Our brain thinks it is perceiving a face when it sees a nose above both eyes and a mouth below it.

Dr. According to Alais, the reason for the situation is the type of energy our brain uses. It is a template matching process. Therefore, when we see something face-like, our brain perceives it as a face and even recognizes emotional expressions in faces.

This is an indication of how our brain has evolved evolutionarily adapted to facial recognition. University of Sydney team, to test the phenomenon He conducted various experiments. Subjects were shown images of real faces and facial pareidolia.

Subjects evaluated these faces for emotional expressions such as happiness or anger.

The results showed that the subjects also perceived the facial pareidolia images as real faces. Our brain; face-like shapes in objects, Using the same mechanism as real faces It was working.

The results of the study show that seeing faces in objects is just one way no childish imagination reveals.

Dr. Alais, “When objects look like faces, our brain by face detection network they are actually processed. “This shows that the expressions on those faces are perceived by our brain’s facial expression processing system.” he says.

That’s why when we see a face in a cloud or a cup, our brain is actually facial recognition mechanism comes into play and we perceive objects as real faces.

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