sheep, the paranormal and the subconscious
The talents of people who believe in the paranormal don’t end there. It seems that they are also better than non-believers at perceiving meaningful patterns in apparently random noise. The classic example of this trait, which is known as pareidolia, is when people claim to see images of the Virgin Mary, say, on the wall of a building or a tortilla. Pareidolia can be auditory as well as visual, as shown by the current craze for detecting electronic voice phenomena (EVP), supposed messages from the dead buried in the random noise of audio recordings.
Psychologists have traditionally viewed this quality as a shortcoming on the part of sheep. But Peter Brugger, a neuroscientist at the University Hospital Zurich in Switzerland, does not think it is a black-and-white issue. He explains that people commit what statisticians call a type 1 error when they perceive a pattern where none exists – when they are overly gullible, in other words. A type 2 error is when they fail to recognise a pattern that does exist – when they are too sceptical. Brugger points out that pattern recognition is an important aspect of human cognition, allowing us to recognise familiar faces or camouflaged predators. “From an evolutionary perspective, the price for protection against type 2 errors is a susceptibility to type 1 errors,” Brugger says. He theorises that it may be safest to err on the side of gullibility. “If you miss the tiger hidden in the grass, then you are dead. If you always see tigers, you are always running away but you’re not dead.”
Does this have something to do with me always spotting faces in random textures and acting like a all-around nutjob?
Read David Byrne’s Blog.
9 February 2006, 23:45 ::
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