Darkness falls completely before our eyes and suddenly, faces begin to appear everywhere. The human tendency to ubiquitously find like has a name, and no, you’re not the only one who experiences it. The ability to shape human faces down to the smallest amorphous expression has its own name: pareidolia. But why is the human brain programmed to detect faces where there are none? It’s a great question to start with.
What is pareidolia?
Pareidolia is the name given to a psychological phenomenon that makes us observe images, figures and human faces where there are none. In fact, it is quite common for children during childhood to openly look for human figures all around them, such as the common practice of looking up at the sky to find familiar figures in the clouds. Precisely this phenomenon is called pareidolia and may be the reason why you are afraid of the dark.
Although it seems more like a mysterious phenomenon, pareidolia actually responds to evolutionary development. That is, the brain is preprogrammed to save time when the chaos of shadows and lights reigns before it, in this way, it anticipates any danger and makes predictions as a way of quickly filtering information from the outside.
This is because within the evolutionary process, we must be able to detect any presence, since if there is a face nearby, it means that there is also a mind nearby, and this in turn, suggests to us that there is someone who can potentially cause us a lot of good or a lot of damage. The brain must be able to detect these stimuli in just seconds to remain alert to any danger.
Why these pareidolias almost always take the form of faces or human figures beyond animals or other known figures is simpler than it seems. Evolutionarily, man has developed neural networks that are responsible for processing stimuli relevant to us, in that sense, what is known is what first comes into view, the closest thing to a human is precisely another human.
fusiform gyrus
The human brain is a marvel of machinery, as it has its own circuits that are activated to process visual information specifically when it comes to distinguishing human faces. These circuits are called the ‘fusiform gyrus’ and are directly controlled by the brain. It’s no surprise that when someone experiences pareidolia, this region of the brain lights up completely, meaning it’s responsible for us being able to see an emotional face even in a photo of a faucet or a simple box.
So although many are afraid of the dark because of pareidolia, the truth is that it is a brilliant mechanism with which the brain saves time and prepares for whatever is necessary. An evolutionary process that explains why we look at faces where there are none.