iceberg pareidolia test

A Miami woman who sold a grilled cheese sandwich on eBay for $28,000 USD probably had pareidolia. She believed she saw the face of the Virgin Mary grilled into the bread. To her it was a miracle and somewhere out there in eBay land a buyer agreed. Pareidolia (pronounced per-ˌī-ˈdoh-lee-a) is the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern. There are plenty of famous examples of this phenomenon – from the Shroud of Turin to the Face of Mars. The Rorschach ink blot test used by psychologists and psychiatrists is an example of directed pareidolia. In the test, a doctor holds up a random ink blot and asks the patient what the image …