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Look at this wall socket. It looks surprised. And now you can’t unsee it. ninebrains.app
Your Everyday World

Why you see faces in plug sockets

Look at this wall socket. It looks surprised. And now you can’t unsee it.

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The aha, in writing

  1. Your brain’s face detector is built for speed and fires on the roughest hint, like two dots and a line.
  2. In one brain scan study, a fake face was first handled like a real one in the brain’s face areas, then reclassified as an object within about a quarter of a second.
  3. Shown pure noise, people reported seeing a face about a third of the time: your detector would rather see a face that isn’t there than miss one that is.

Wardle, Taubert, Teichmann, Baker. Rapid and dynamic processing of face pareidolia in the human brain. Nature Communications, 2020.

Liu, Li, Feng, Li, Tian, Lee. Seeing Jesus in toast: neural and behavioral correlates of face pareidolia. Cortex, 2014.

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