Even on illusory faces: Happiness is recognised faster than anger on female (but not male) faces

What is it about?

We have a tendency to see illusory faces on inanimate objects such as tree trunks or a piece of burnt toast, a phenomenon called ‘Face Pareidolia’. Moreover, these illusory faces may appear happy or angry, male or female. The current study shows that these illusory cues of emotion and gender affect behaviour just like the real thing. On real faces, we recognise happiness faster than anger, the happy face advantage, and this advantage is larger for female than for male faces. The current study shows the same result for illusory faces – happiness was recognised faster and more accurately than anger on illusory female faces whereas on illusory male faces, anger was recognised faster and more accurately. This suggests that illusory faces engage the same neural processes and trigger the same biases as do real faces.

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Photo by Peter Laing on Unsplash

Photo by Peter Laing on Unsplash

Why is it important?

It is important to remember that ambient examples of face pareidolia are just ordinary objects, they aren’t people. They have no biologically assigned gender – they experience no emotions. And at some level, we acknowledge that. Yet these results, and others, have indicated that putative face-like patterns are sufficient to drive all the neural and cognitive processes that are supposed to be reserved for the faces of social agents. Without thinking about it, we imbue these inanimate objects with identities and intentions even though its effectively a waste of resources to do so. This informs our theories of human social intelligence and helps us understand the way the brain processes visual input and extracts socio-emotional meaning.

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