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perception
You think faces are everywhere because your brain is overactive.
Pareidolia is the tendency to perceive meaningful patterns, such as faces, in random or ambiguous visual or auditory stimuli.
The evolutionary logic described as 'safer to mistake a rock for a predator' is known as the Smoke Detector Principle, an application of Signal Detection Theory often discussed in evolutionary psychology to explain why humans are prone to false-positive pattern recognition.
You are seeing what your survival instinct requires.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Carl Sagan, 1995
- What the check found
- While Sagan discussed the survival value of face recognition in his 1995 book, the 'predator/rock' heuristic is a distinct evolutionary theory known as the Smoke Detector Principle.
- Confidence
- Solid, with limits
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.