Pareidolia

Santo, Stephanie

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/99906 Copy

Description

Title

Pareidolia

Author(s)

Santo, Stephanie

Contributor(s)

Berenbaum, Howard

Issue Date

2018-04

Keyword(s)

• Perception
• face
• cloud

Abstract

Pareidolia is the act of seeing an image or pattern where one may or may not exist. A very common example is seeing that a cloud forms a shape. We developed a test to measure pareidolia by having participants report whether or not they saw that the clouds in a given image formed a shape by asking them whether or not they saw a shape and where they saw it if they did (using coordinates). They were given the option to report seeing nothing so that they did not think they had to see something. Some pictures were edited to include faces and some were not edited. The goal was to see whether the participants that were given an anger manipulation were more likely to notice faces (and/or other shapes) than participants in a control condition. We also hypothesized that participants high in pareidolia also experienced high rates of false memories and paranoia. The latter two were measured through existing questionnaires. Our final hypothesis was that participants who exhibited more emotional awareness experienced lower levels of all three and emotional awareness caused those levels to be lower. Overall, this research aimed to explain reality construction and has pathological implications.

Type of Resource

• text
• image

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/99906

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2018 Stephanie Santo

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