科学美国人60秒 为什么看哪都像脸?(2)（在线收听）

We started by finding examples of face pareidolia on the internet.

我们开始从互联网上寻找面部空想性错视的例子。

Now, people send us their own examples.

现在，人们寄给我们他们自己的例子。

And we also take photos of illusory faces that we see out in the world.

我们也会给我们在世界上看到的错觉面孔拍照。

They showed 250 of these photos to some thirty-eight hundred volunteers.

他们向大约3800名志愿者展示了其中的250张照片。

And we found that people readily attribute these features to illusory faces.

我们发现，人们很容易将这些特征归因于错觉面孔。

For example, a given illusory face might look like a fearful young boy or a grumpy older woman.

例如，一张给定的错觉脸可能看起来像一个害怕的小男孩或一个脾气暴躁的老女人。

But most striking of all…

但最令人震惊的是……

There was a strong bias for people to perceive illusory faces as male rather than female.

人们强烈倾向于将错觉面孔感知为男性而非女性。

About four times as often, the researchers found.

研究人员发现，大约四倍于此。

And this was the case for both female and male participants.

这是女性和男性参与者的情况。

So it wasn't just that men saw Mr. Potato Head everywhere they looked.

所以，男性不仅到处都能看到蛋头先生。

It also wasn't tied to the type of object in question like a hammer versus a handbag.

它也与问题对象的类型，比如锤子和手提包，没有联系。

And the male bias persists when the faces are shown in black and white, so it's not due to gender associations with color, either.

当脸是黑白的时候，面孔是男性的偏倚仍然存在，所以这也不是因为性别与颜色的联系。

Obviously none of these fake faces has a biological sex.

显然，这些虚假的面部都没有生理性别。

Which means there is no reason for us to perceive them to have a particular gender.

这意味着我们没有理由认为他们有特定的性别。

The fact that we do shows the illusory faces also engage our social perception system.

事实上，我们确实展示了错觉面孔，这也涉及到我们的社会感知系统。

And the reason we default to seeing males is that our brains need more information before we see a face as female.

我们默认看到男性的原因是，我们的大脑需要更多的信息，才能看到女性的面孔。

Think of a smiley face emoji.

想想一个笑脸表情。

Most people would probably say that it looks more male than female.

大多数人可能会说它看起来更像男性而不是女性。

The addition of other details, such as eyelashes and hair, is used to make emojis look more female.

加上睫毛和头发等其他细节，表情符号才看起来更女性化。

The same is true of Lego characters.

乐高角色也是如此。

The fact that we're so quick to see faces in couch cushions and tree trunks and slices of bread…gender assignments aside…is maybe not all that surprising.

事实上，我们能如此迅速地在沙发垫、树干和面包片上看到人脸……撇开性别分配不讲……原因也许并不那么令人惊讶。

The same thing happens to monkeys…creatures who are also hard-wired for making social connections.

同样的事情也发生在猴子身上，它们天生就有建立社会联系的能力。

And it suggests that we see illusory faces because, like other social primates, our brains are so tuned into faces, we don't want to miss a single face in the environment, even if that means occasionally making a mistake.

这表明我们看到了错觉面孔，因为，像其他社会性灵长类动物一样，我们的大脑对面孔是如此敏感，我们不想错过环境中任何一张面孔，即使这意味着偶尔会犯错误。

Seems the potential benefit of gaining a friend is worth more than the potential cost of losing face.

似乎获得一个朋友的潜在好处比错认面孔的潜在代价更值得。

For Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I'm Karen Hopkin.

谢谢大家收听科学美国人——60秒科学。我是凯伦·霍普金。