Ganzfeld Effect

[zenmaster]

Similarly, people suffer from a Ganzfeld effect when faced with ambiguity of ideas or ideas which have not yet been informed. That is, their mind tends to fill in the blanks with what may be related from their hopes or fears (some unbalanced distortion).


http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/162835.php

How Believing Can Be Seeing: Context Dictates What We Believe We See
(...)
Contrary to what one might expect, it is a vague rather than a bright and clearly visible context that most strongly permits our beliefs to override the evidence and fill in the blanks. In fact, a bright and clearly visible context actually overrides the evidence in the opposite direction - suppressing our 'seeing' of the vague target even when it is present.
(...)

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200...103210.htm

Paper:
http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info...bi.0040014