Apr 05, 2014 5:45 AM GMT
NYT: Such apparitions can be as lucrative as they are seemingly miraculous. In 2004, a Florida woman named Diane Duyser sold a decade-old grilled cheese sandwich that bore a striking resemblance to the Virgin Mary. She got $28,000 for it on eBay.
The psychological phenomenon of seeing something significant in an ambiguous stimulus is called pareidolia. Virgin Mary grilled cheese sandwiches and other pareidolia remind us that almost any object is open to multiple interpretations. Less understood, however, is what drives some interpretations over others.
One explanation in a paper linked to below is hunger for a moral domain. According to the social psychologist Melvin J. Lerner, people have a fundamental need to believe that they live in a fair and orderly environment, in which good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. When people are faced with unjust outcomes happening to others they often take steps to compensate the victims — or even to attribute blame to them for the harm they experienced. This helps satiate their “moral hunger.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/opinion/sunday/is-that-jesus-in-your-toast.html?_r=0
The psychological phenomenon of seeing something significant in an ambiguous stimulus is called pareidolia. Virgin Mary grilled cheese sandwiches and other pareidolia remind us that almost any object is open to multiple interpretations. Less understood, however, is what drives some interpretations over others.
One explanation in a paper linked to below is hunger for a moral domain. According to the social psychologist Melvin J. Lerner, people have a fundamental need to believe that they live in a fair and orderly environment, in which good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. When people are faced with unjust outcomes happening to others they often take steps to compensate the victims — or even to attribute blame to them for the harm they experienced. This helps satiate their “moral hunger.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/opinion/sunday/is-that-jesus-in-your-toast.html?_r=0
