Matrixing/Pareidolia

[A.Beautiful.Katastrophe.]

You seem to be the one to talk to about this. So, here goes. I think it would be very benificial to post a sticky about a perfectly common phenomena the TAPS team has dubbed 'matrixing':

" Matrixing is the easy way of saying Pareidolia.
Pareidolia is as follows:

Pareidolia (pronounced /pɛɹaɪˈdoliə/ or /pæraɪˈdəʊliə/), first used in 1994 by Steven Goldstein[1], describes a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being mistakenly perceived as recognizable. Common examples include images of animals or faces in clouds, seeing the man in the moon, and hearing messages on records played in reverse. The word comes from the Greek para- – amiss, faulty, wrong – and eidolon – image, the diminutive of eidos – appearance, form.


Human beings are apparently "hard-wired" to identify the human face. One possible explanation for this is that unresponsive infants tended to be ignored or abandoned, as Carl Sagan speculated in The Demon-Haunted World.

Skeptics assert that sightings of religious or iconic figures in everyday objects, such as Marian apparitions, are examples of pareidolia, as are electronic voice phenomena. The Face on Mars is a phenomenon that succeeded the Martian canals, both eventually attributed to pareidolia, when the "seen" images disappeared in better and more numerous images. Many Canadians thought they saw the face of the Devil in the Queen's hair on a dollar bill in the 1954 series, adapted from a photograph. The bills were not withdrawn from circulation, but the image was altered in its next printing.


A similar phenomenon is the clustering illusion.

The Rorschach inkblot test uses pareidolia attempting to gain insight into a person's mental state. While this test is still widely employed, its scientific basis is disputed, and no studies have shown empirical confirmation of success." - Written by Zombie_slag, a member of Taps forums.

Thought you might be interested.  

[A.Beautiful.Katastrophe.]

I just realized I could have pm'd this to you. My bad. Delete this if it is of no use. Heh.  

[QUE_SAGE]

na its actually a good thing i saw this..... one day i could see nintendo faces in the clouds..... i think its awesome !!!!  

[A.Beautiful.Katastrophe.]

Lmfao. rofl Haha. Well, in all seriousness, it would be something very useful to those who have a hard time distinguishing tricks of the light and true images of ghosts. It's a good thing to be skeptical of such photos, because while you want as much proof as you can find, you don't want to believe every little thing is a ghost.  

[Lord Jagged]

So that's what it's called.
I know of it from my research on rorsarch for psychology work. It does seem to be one of those things that can effect what people believe they see.
I will leave this up for people to see, though I'm going to change the title.  

[A.Beautiful.Katastrophe.]

Wonderful. I'm glad I could be of some use. o-^^-o I'll see what else I can contribute. Haha.