Pareidolia

What do you see in the photo? A man holding a baby/toddler or the face of ... Jesus perhaps?

 

Now look just at the section outlined in red. Try to ignore the rest of the photo entirely. See the child, wearing a bonnet, sitting on the man's lap with her right arm lying across her lap?

This is not even an intentional optical illusion. It is an example of how our brain fools us.

Pareidolia (/pærɨˈdoʊliə/ parr-i-DOH-lee-ə) is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant, a form of apophenia. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon or the Moon rabbit, and hearing hidden messages on records when played in reverse.

I have been pondering the role of a sort of social or cultural pareidolia, whereby entire groups of people see the impoverished but nonetheless working class as being lazy, stupid or even wicked. My brain is socially conditioned to see this pattern: hard work = success = financial prosperity. When I see someone working but not becoming prosperous, my brain tells me that what I see -- a person holding down two part time jobs and putting in 60 hours of back-breaking work each week while trying to raise a family but never having enough to save or improve his or her life -- must not be what is there. So what I see is someone who is stupid or lazy.

That is an example of how politically conservative people might be fooled into seeing what isn't there or fail to see what is there. This mechanism can work, however, for/against all people: liberals, centrists, Tea Party, Green Party, libertarians, socialists, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, agnostics and on and on and on.

What template am I imposing on the world that causes me to fail to see what is there?