Women who have just given birth are more likely to see familiar-looking faces in everyday objects, research suggests

Whether it is a cloud formation, piece of tree bark or even a slice of toast, we all think we have seen familiar-looking faces in the most unlikely places.

The phenomenon, called face pareidolia, is when people identify recognisable images in random objects or patterns of light.

Now, research suggests women who have just given birth are the most likely to experience the occurrence.

Researchers surveyed 401 women across three groups who were either pregnant, had given birth in the last 12 months or were neither.

All were shown a series of images including ‘obvious’ faces in vegetables or within rock formations, and ‘difficult’ faces in leaves and fire.

Now, research suggests women who have just given birth are the most likely to experience the occurrence

Researchers surveyed 401 women across three groups who were either pregnant, had given birth in the last 12 months or were neither. All were shown a series of images including ‘obvious’ faces in vegetables or within rock formations, and ‘difficult’ faces in leaves and fire

The women who had given recently birth were more likely to see faces in both categories than the females in the other groups.

It suggests that women are more sensitive to seeing faces in early parenthood, potentially promoting social bonding, the researchers said.

Writing in the journal Biology Letters, the researchers, from the University of Queensland in Australia, said their findings provide ‘the first demonstration that our sensitivity to faces is not stable throughout our adult lives’.

They said experiencing face pareidolia has previously been linked to dementia, Parkinson’s and increased feelings of loneliness.

‘Quantifying the factors that predict changes in this sensitivity will be essential for… deciding whether face pareidolia is just a fun side effect of a hypersensitivity to faces… or a diagnostic tool that would be leveraged to monitor disease progression and flag mental health decline,’ they added.

A previous study found faces seen in inanimate objects are more likely to be perceived as male.

In a large experiment involving nearly 4,000 adults, researchers discovered there was a strong bias of interpreting the faces as male rather than female, at a ratio of approximately 4:1.

This could be because male is the ‘default’ gender for a face unless other visual details such as long eyelashes, shaped eyebrows and long hair are visible, the scientists said.