Anthropomorphizing / Anthropomorphism

We regularly receive pictures in which people find some amazing faces. While some of these are very compelling evidence of ghost activity, others may be what's often called, in the ghost hunting community, "matrixing" - the effect of seeing images and faces in inanimate things, better known as pareidolia.

The scientific term for seeing human faces in inanimate objects, such as the moon or sky, is "anthropomorphism," and may be defined as "to give human attributes to non-human things." The idea of seeing faces in different objects or within patterns is something we do naturally as we try and identify with the world around us – a trait of human behavior. Anthropomorphizing happens when the human brain and eye work together to see shapes and patterns, collectively, as familiar, anthropomorphic (human-looking) images.