PICTURE THIS

WHAT your reaction to certain pictures reveals about your health CAN you see a face in the picture below? Spotting human features in objects including clouds — known as pareidolia — is a normal reaction.

We are naturally primed to hone in on faces in order to decide quickly if a person is a friend or foe, so our brains will search for even the semblance of a face in an image.

This might explain why, in 2015, researchers at the NTT Communication Science Laboratory in Tokyo found that people who spotted faces more readily than others were more likely to score higher on traits for neuroticism.

Women also tended to spot faces more than men. The researchers suggested this might be because women are generally physically weaker, so would benefit more from a finely tuned warning system.

They found, too, that happy people picked out faces more readily, and said this could be because we’re more likely to think creatively when we’re in a good mood.