Humans Are Wired To Notice Faces In Things

Human beings are wired to notice faces in things.

Humans are especially wired to notice other human faces. Developmental psychology research demonstrates that normal babies orient preferentially to human faces over other types of stimulus. Neuropsychology research demonstrates that there is a special module of the brain dedicated to face recognition. - http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/nov03.asp

Nearly all humans find human faces engaging. It seems to be wired into us. Babies can recognize faces practically from birth. In fact, faces seem to have co-evolved with our interest in them; the face is the body's billboard. So all other things being equal, a painting with faces in it will interest people more than one without. - http://www.paulgraham.com/goodart.html

I came across a blog, "Faces in Places" this morning which is generated from a Flickr group where users can submit their photos of "faces found in everyday places". Some are lame but the good ones make up for it.

Here are some examples from "Faces in Places".


This one is my favourite






Jewelery Monster

Faces in Places
RSS Feed
Flickr Group

When I went to TAFE I remember my lecturer telling us that cars grills/backs of cars are usually designed to look like smiling faces as this is subconsciously preferred by humans. Some cars of the 50's were shaped to look like the voluptuous curves of a beautiful woman. I was so excited when I found this out, I had seen cars all my life, why had I not picked up on this. Cool.

Some examples:







A blog post about car grills being designed this way: http://members.aol.com/nonverbal2/vegrille.htm

This will probably be the only time I post pictures of cars on my blog.

I always notice faces in things, whenever I play that making symbols and squiggles into pictures game I'd estimate that around 75% of the time I would make the lines and squiggles into a face.

I also feel the need to give ordinary items personality by adding a face to them. Some examples of things I have "Faced" in the past.


"Sippy" my water bottle


My stapler


My Bacon & Eggs #1


My Bacon & Eggs #2


Here are some cool sidewalk art faces.









Taken from here: http://www0.fotolog.com/all_photos.html?user=6emeia


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Posted by Nathan Kowald @ 8:05 AM