The Face You See on Mars Surface - Pareidolia and Self-Deception

On the 25th of July, 1976, Viking 1 Orbiter took several pictures of the Cydonia Martian region during a mission to the red planet. One of the images received particular attention from the public:

At a first glance it is easy to note a striking resemblance with a human face. Conspiracy theorists, adepts of magical thinking, and many from the non-scientific-educated public hypothesized that what they saw was the work of aliens.

Mars Global Surveyor took pictures of the same region about 20 years later:

Looks like our friends, the aliens, were trying to cover up their traces.

As it was pointed out from the very beginning, the images were nothing more than the result of natural forces like erosion and winds and the light and shadow effects at the time the 1976 image was taken. We should give proper credit to The Sun for that...

But conspiracy theorists don't buy it. According to Rob Carroll:

"This soon gave birth to the claim that the face was a sculpture of a human being located next to a city whose temples and fortifications could also be seen. Some began to wonder:

Were these built by the same beings who built the ancient airports in Nazca, Peru, and who were now communicating to us through elaborate symbols carved in crop circles?"

This is probably the classic example of pareidolia. In psychology, pareidolia refers to seeing/detecting patterns where there are none. Other examples are:

• images of human faces, objects, animals, and even religious figures in cloud formations
• the moon rabbit
• the man in the moon
• the face of Jesus in the stump of a tree
• hidden messages in records/music played backwards

Do an image search on these and amaze/amuse yourself!

Carl Sagan, an astronomer, thinks pareidolia is an ingrained trait we acquired through evolution. In his 1995 book The Demon Haunted World he explains:

"As soon as the infant can see, it recognizes faces, and we now know that this skill is hardwired in our brains. Those infants who a million years ago were unable to recognize a face smiled back less, were less likely to win the hearts of their parents, and less likely to prosper. These days, nearly every infant is quick to identify a human face, and to respond with a goony grin."

While this may be beneficial for us in recognizing faces, there may be other explanations for pareidolia towards animals and objects.

According to Dr. Stephen Novella, clinical neurobiologist and Senior Editor of Science Based Medicine:

"Humans have a well-documented tendency for pattern recognition. It is both a great cognitive strength but also can be a weakness because we may see patterns that do not actually exist. We constantly recognize illusory patterns, which are manifested in pareidolia, data mining, hyperactive agency detection, and superstitious thinking."

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What to do?

It may be clear that thanks to evolution we are error-prone when it comes to detecting patterns in randomness. It can often do us more harm than good.

We come to life prepackaged with numerous heuristics and biases. They may have served us well in a dangerous primordial world where we could have fallen prey to predatory animals. But this is rarely the case today.

We should respond to our flawed brain by raising our thinking above its faulty factory defaults. We can do this through:

• critical thinking
• metacognition - thinking about thinking (analyzing how our thought processes undergo)
• healthy skepticism and systematic doubt for the claims of others
• systematic doubt towards our own thoughts (to avoid self-jeopardy)

In research we also do this by appropriately applying the scientific method; it can also be applied to everyday life.

Thinking is what we do not posses by nature. Thinking, like any other skill, is developed through deliberate practice. I'll keep saying this until it spills through my ears.

To develop your thinking and to grow your mind, I'd recommend you start by reading the book of Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow.

I'll end by leaving you with a short video (5 minutes) in which Hank Green discusses pareidolia, presents a few studies on the topic, and, most interestingly and funnily, shows you numerous illustrations of pareidolia (seeing things/people that aren't there):

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To stay in touch, follow @cristi

Credits for Images: By Viking 1, NASA [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons and Mars Global Surveyor, Nasa.

#psychology #practical #self-deception

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Cristi Vlad, Self-Experimenter and Author