Paraeidolia as Psychological Phenomena - Essay Example

Running head: Psychology Psychological Phenomenon Name Institution Date submitted Psychological Phenomena: Paraeidolia Human beings are capable of seeing patterns and shapes, which they regard as meaningful in the natural world that is around them. Many when they look at the clouds claim to see a face or religious symbols in any shape for instance a rock. In history this shapes seen in the natural objects were known as Lus Naturae or jokes of nature. This was a deep belief of the medieval naturalists that nature jokes around human by placing shapes such as faces in objects for men to find. Currently, some connect such shapes to the power of the human mind to paste meaning on the occurrences of the world surrounding it. This phenomenon is called pareidolia referring to the ability or the tendency of the mind to get meaningful patterns in vague/random stimuli. For instance, people perceive to see a person’s face in a tree saying it’s Jesus and a person in a robe referring to the Virgin Mary. This happens when overactive pattern- seeking brains make recognizable information out of randomness. This is due to the fact that our brains are not capable of tolerating vague/obscure stimuli perfectly, bringing the tendency of perceiving clear and distant images within the extemporaneous stimuli. It has been said that the ancestors perceived this vague data as a threat and those who ignored the stimuli were more likely to be predated and therefore they passed them on their genes. Just after an infant is born, it recognizes faces and this skill are hardwired in the brain. The pattern recognition machinery in a human brain is very efficient in extracting a face from a clutter of other detail that one see faces where there are none (Sagan, 1995). This therefore means that face perception brought about by face like objects is a relatively early process and can not be classified as reinterpretations phenomenon. According to Michael Shermer (2008), stated that scientists have long treated patternicity as an error in cognition in that one believes that something is real while in the actual fact it is not. Pareidolia paves way to be related to the world, interpret cosmic signs visualizing the sky and the land. This includes all the five senses in the formulation of images and in the ancient it was said to arouse the gods from the combination of this images and human emotions. Currently if anyone looks at a picture of a particular piece of toast and very clearly see the face of someone does saying that its not real make one stop seeing the face?, or when one looks at an art communicating a particular emotion, is the emotion imparted by the artist or is it the brain that add the meaning?. In all this there is a clear link between space and time that the brain plugs into, which make a certain conclusion from a specific input (Gladwell, 2005). Moreover, when a person looks at something and before it is sent to the other part of the brain where it is processed thoroughly, there are chances of judgment and decision making when alacrity is important. This happened through specialized processing and recognition of human emotions in the brain of a human brain. Its worth noting that in psychology, the Rorschach test consists of a series of images used to invoke pareidolia to delve into the psyche of the patient and in religion and superstition, a vague stimuli is believed to be definitely sent and different people react differently to this stimulus and that’s why there are high chances that at the look of someplace, different people can attest to seeing different objects or figures. References Shermer, M. (2000) How We Believe. W.H. Freeman / Henry Holt and Company: New York. Gladwell, M. (2005) ‘Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.’ New York: Little, Brown and Company. Sagan, C. (1995) The demon-haunted world—science as a candle in the dark. Random House, New York. RIDDLES AS A COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGICAL PHENOMENON Attitude processes and substances of collective unconscious or collective conscious are the ones referred to as community psychological phenomena. They are connected with the historical moment in which they appear, but as a sense and substance, pattern and code, and they are out of their contemporary time. They can be compared with an image without a face or a substance without a shape. Considering the theory of analytical psychology, the collective unconscious is part of the personality structure which appears in dreams, symptoms of psychological diseases, visions, ideas, attitudes and takes differing shapes and forms. Community psychological phenomena appears in community life itself, in communication and contacts, lifestyle and could be found in activities like culture, religion, folklore, rituals ,riddles just to mention but a few (Brenner, 1974). Riddles are considered a community psychological phenomenon when they are in different sources. Riddles are keys to doors that open unknown secrets or ancient treasures. To solve the riddle is to say something that you think you have known but have never seen before or going through the rational level to a symbolic meta-level. It’s the transformation of the unconscious to the conscious simply because solving a riddle is transforming it from being a symbol to a rational language. For instance the hero and the dragon a reader identifies with the hero just as symbol of the conscious and also with the dragon, as a part of the readers personality, but this time as the unconscious one whereby the reader feels but never feels completely. To answer the riddle is to bring this knowledge to the conscious level where it belongs to the hero. In some cultures, riddles are played near the fireplace in dark, given by an old man to a child. This represents the exchange of experience from one generation to another and both parties participating gain knowledge in the game. Riddles bind the generations together to experience the magic of the archetype. This is referred to as the pressure of an everlasting game of searching for self, building the right questions ands answers, touching the archetype and feeling the numinous. In folkloric sources, riddles are verbal and they don’t occur in written form at all. Riddles viewed at a psychoanalysis perspective, active listening, unmasking, turning someone’s drives and attitudes from the unconscious level to conscious have many similarities with solving riddles (Eliade, 1976). There is a category of riddles that is called neck riddles in which the character life depends on solving the riddle. In this case the one who answers/hero continues. From a psychological analysis, getting the Self is the same, whereby, the old self dies in order to replace it with a new self/higher level. The old self cannot be compared with the new and therefore this riddles are kind of initiation. Riddles are asked in a situation of comfort for they require new discovery. This is due to the fact that they call for going back to the beginning, inside, where things are only principles with no shape and when the answer is ready then the shape is done too. They (riddles) are the contact between the old and the young, dragon and hero or someone who know more that the other (Jung, 1997). They are symbols of rebirthing experience, coming from eternity and going back to it again, an experience that will never be lost. They teach one on how to create worlds, objects and more so becoming creators. When one answers a riddle, this marks the beginning of a new life. This means that the man and the world becomes larger, and this effected because the man sees what he knows and do not have any senses to recognize the things he don’t know. Finally by giving riddles, the dynamic cognitive process which takes substance from the unconscious is trained and hence the cognitive skills are developed. References Brenner, C. (1974) An ElementaryTextbook of Psychoanalysis. International Universities Press Eliade, M. (1976) Myths, Rites and Symbols. Harper Collins. Jung, C. (1997) The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. Princeton University Press. CONFIRMATION BIAS: A PSYCHOLOGICAL PHENOMENON This is the most widely accepted notion of inferential error to come out of the literature on human reasoning by psychologists (Evans, 1989); confirmation bias refers to unwitting selectivity in the use of acquisition and use of evidence. It has for a long time being believed as an important determinant of thought and behavior. This phenomenon has been referred as one of the most venerable ideas of traditional epistemology and one of the better demonstration findings of the twentieth century (Nisbett & Ross, 1980). According to Bacon (1939), once an opinion is adopted by human understanding, there is a tendency of drawing all things to support and agree with it. And although there are other things going contrary to that, they are either neglected or despised, or to some extents they are rejected. Since days in memorial, people have a tendency of handling evidence in biased way if at all the in question matters to them. According to Thurstone (1924), when confronted by a dispute between strangers, one is intelligent about weighing the evidence and in reaching a rational conclusion. However, if it be from within or from a fraternity brother’s one will be a party of the fight and lose the ability to see any other side of the issue than oneself. This implies that the more urgent the impulse, or closer it comes to the maintenance of our won selves, the more difficult it becomes to be rational and intelligent. Evidence can only be treated in an unbiased way if only one has no personal interest in that to which it pertains. Baron (1995) found out that people tend to take sides in an argument higher that a two sided argument, suggesting that the bias is due to common belief about what makes an argument strong. Julius Caesar famously noted men’s tendency to believe quite readily that which they wish to be true (Caesar, 1873). In the twentieth century, psychologists confirmed the existence of this phenomenon and strength of the said phenomenon in which people tend to interpret a variety of stimuli and forms of evidence which show that the determining factor is preconceptions and desires. Many investigators have stated that the importance of people’s expectations as sources of bias in their judgment of co-variation. They ague that two variables are related and appear to increase the chances that one will find evidence consistent with the relationship and thereby decrease the chances of obtaining evidence and therefore there are tendencies to disconfirm it. Co-variation of judgments tends to be accurate when people lack strong preconception of the relationship between the variables of interest or when the relationship is consistent with their preconception that counters the already existent relationship (Kuhn, 1989). Under this phenomenon it is worth noting that when a person draws a conclusion form the ground of information acquired and integrated over time, then the information acquired early carries much weight than the one received later (Lingale & Ostrom, 1981). This is referred to as primary effect meaning that people form an opinion early in the process and then evaluate subsequently acquired information in a way the is partial to the opinion (Francis Bacon, 1939). finally it is human to always look for evidence that is directly supportive to the issue they favor and even those they entertain but about which are different. They seldom seek evidence naturally that would show that something is wrong and indulge in to doing so because they understand that this is the only effective way to show it to be right if it is really so. References Caesar, G.J. (1873). Commentaries on the Gallic war 155 (51 BCE) John Wiley & Sons. Nisbett, R. & Ross, L. (1980). Human Inference, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, p. 67. Evans, J. St. B. T. (1989). Bias in human reasoning:Causes and consequences. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum Nisbett, R. E., & Ross, L. (1980). Human inference: Strategies and shortcomings of social judgement. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Bacon, F. (1939). Novum organum. In Burtt, E. A.(Ed.), The English philosophers from Bacon to Mill(pp. 24-123). New York: Random House. (Originalwork published in 1620) Baron, J. (1995). Myside bias in thinking about abortion. Thinking and reasoning, 7, 221-235. Kuhn, D. (1989). Children and adults as intuitive scientists. Psychological Review, 96, 674-689. Lingle, J. H., & Ostrom, T. M. (1981). Principles of memory and cognition in attitude formation. InR. E. Petty, T. M. Ostrom, & T. C. Brock (Eds.), Cognitive responses in persuasive communications: A text in attitude change (pp. 399-420).Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Read More