Pareidolia: The Dangers of Interpretation

     Have you ever looked at the front of a car and seen a face staring back at you? Or seen a cloud that looks just like a bird? This phenomenon is called pareidolia, which is the tendency of human brains to interpret a vague stimulus as something familiar. Pareidolia is not solely a visual tendency, however: it is simply classified by an interpretation of any vague stimulus as something meaningful to the observer. Non visual examples of pareidolia include hearing sinister messages in reversed music or interpreting a headache as a brain tumor. 

    Humans naturally seek to find meaning where meaning is unclear. In fact, this habit is reinforced in schools through activities like literary analysis and interpreting the data recorded after a lab in science class. Because of the superfluity of pareidolia and the extensive interpretations it can offer an observer, pareidolia can often times be harmful.

    Interpreting vague stimuli can be especially harmful depending on the mental state of the observer. An obsessively religious person might think they see Jesus' face in a cloud and take that as some sort of sign, which might perpetrate and reinforce religious delusions and psychosis. Someone who suffers from Hypochondria--a phobia of serious illness--might interpret nausea or pain as something chronic, causing them severe anxiety and panic. 

    While negative implications of pareidolia primarily effect the individual, they can cause harm in a public sense. An individual may believe they received a message from God ordering them to sacrifice their children or to drive their car into a crowd of people. Those who have already shown symptoms of delusion are more susceptible to pareidolia of this kind, however. 

    It's important to realize that there is not meaning in everything. While a common narrative pushed in schools encourages students to look for the meaning in every vague stimulus, when interpretation becomes spiritual and is not based on fact, things can get dangerous quick. Humans are wired and reinforced to interpret, but interpretations can be affected by an individual's upbringing, environment, and psyche.