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Have you ever felt like someone was watching you from behind, and you turned around, and sure enough, you met someone's eyes.

Coincidence? Or have we evolved the ability to sense people's eyes?

You can't feel... Right? Edward Titchener, an English psychologist, first described this phenomenon in an article published in Science in 1898.

Titchener found that some of his college students were convinced that they could "feel" someone staring at them from behind-a focused gaze that would cast a pressure on the back of their neck, causing a tense or stiff sensation, and sometimes a slightly painful tingling sensation that grew stronger and larger until people had to turn their heads to see who was staring at them.

Who's watching me?| Giphy, however, did some simple experiments and concluded that it was not "being looked at" that caused "feeling." The whole process is more like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

1 When there is someone behind them, people are anxious because they worry about what others think of them. This anxiety can make people feel uncomfortable. And once people focus their attention on a certain part of the body, such as the nape of the neck, it is easier to amplify the weak sensation in that part.

Titchener gives the example of a friend who was learning to dance and felt uncomfortable every time he had to turn his back on his trainer (even a personal trainer), but he felt relieved when he stood behind his trainer and knew he couldn't see him.

2 When people feel uncomfortable because they think "someone is looking at me," they may have more actions, such as moving the back of their neck, reaching for the uncomfortable part, turning around and scanning behind them. These actions will attract the attention of others.

In other words, it's not a coincidence that someone is looking at you when you turn around. It's just that the causal relationship needs to be reversed.

And then you turn around and someone's watching you.| Giphy is not because someone is looking at you that you feel uncomfortable; it is because you feel uncomfortable, move a lot, and even turn around, thus causing others to look at you. It takes about a second for you to turn your head, and about 0.2 seconds for the person behind you to turn and stare at you.

In 1913, another study was published in the American Journal of Psychology.[2] John Coover, a psychologist at Stanford University, came up with a good idea. He randomly decided when to "mark" people by rolling dice. If the dice were odd, he would stare at that person for 15 seconds; if the dice were even, he would not stare at that person. Before he starts, Coover will tap once with his pencil, and at the end, he will tap twice with his pencil. The "targeted person" with his back to Cooper needs to guess whether he is being targeted during this period.

As a result, 10 people each guessed 100 times, a total of 1000 times. The correct rate of guessing was only 50.2%, which was no different from guessing. Coover's research shows, once again, that people can't tell when someone is watching them correctly.

It seems that the conclusion has been reached, but things are not completely over.

From Coover's research, people can't tell when someone is watching them correctly.| Did Giphy subconsciously feel it? Someone suggested another possibility, feeling it, but only staying in the subconscious, not in the conscious, so it cannot be judged correctly.

In 1993, William Braud improved the study.[3][4] He felt that people might be too nervous to be studied, and with uncertainty, ignore subtle signals they receive. Browder, inspired by polygraphs, strapped electrode sensors to subjects to record fluctuations in physiological signals. He chose to measure electrodermal activity (EDA), which is mood-related, not consciously controlled, but autonomously regulated by sympathetic nerves.

Browder also completely separated the "stalker" from the "stared," sitting in separate rooms and "remote staring" through surveillance cameras.

The marker performs 10 "marking" and 10 "unmarking," each lasting 30 seconds, in random order.

The target doesn't have to do anything. They don't have to guess whether they're being watched. They just sit there and let the device record their physiological signals.

Shockingly,"really stared" was significantly associated with "strong arousal of galvanic skin activity." These two people were in different rooms and were only "seen" through the camera.

When you're stared at, your body reacts.| Giphy, can this result be repeated?

Interestingly, whether it can be repeated is related to the background of the investigator himself. Faith is magic; unbelief is magic. People from the Institute for Parapsychology (the study of paranormal phenomena) were more likely to repeat the results. Psychologists, who are skeptical themselves, tend to conclude that there is no effect.

In a review published in the British Journal of Psychology in 2004, American and German researchers collected 40 relevant studies from 1977 to 2000. After excluding four studies of poor quality, 36 studies were analyzed according to the weight of the studies and concluded that "distant gaze" caused some physiological response. However, a comprehensive analysis of only the seven studies with the best quality showed that "distant gaze" had no effect.

The review concluded that conclusions cannot be drawn at this time and that more high-quality research is needed in the future.

Why is there a "feeling of being watched"? Whether the "feeling of being looked at" is a real feeling of the external environment or a spontaneous illusion of the brain, it can be explained by evolution.

A lot of people talk about what it feels like to look at an animal or be looked at by an animal. Pet owners often feel stared at by their cats and dogs. Some wildlife photographers believe that animals will notice even if they are viewed through telescopes.

"I'm being watched! "|Giphy naturalist William J. Long once wrote of the feeling of sitting alone in the woods as a teenager: "I often have this feeling that something is watching me. Again and again, before I could see anything, this feeling would come. When I looked around, I almost always saw some bird, fox, or squirrel, which might have noticed me turning around and crept up to me, looking curiously at me. "[6]

Evolutionarily, this feeling has certain benefits.

When we think we're being watched by a predator, we're more likely to be careful, discreet, alert, and hidden, thereby reducing our risk of detection by predators and increasing our chances of survival in the jungle.

But if the "feeling of being watched" is not a real telepathy but an illusion, why does this illusion exist?

And there are many people who have this illusion. Cooper surveyed Stanford students in that year. 68% of 146 students in one course had this "feeling of being watched" and 85% of 95 students in another course also had this "feeling of being watched."

Again, evolutionarily, this illusion has certain benefits.

When we think we are being watched, we are more likely to follow the rules and conform to the laws and ethics that prevail in society. And these good behaviors make us more socially acceptable and less likely to be collectively expelled, thereby increasing our survival rate in the group.

Being stared at may be an illusion, but it makes us behave better.| Giphy But this illusion can also cause trouble.

Psychologists have proposed the spotlight effect [7] and the sinister attribution error [8].

The "spotlight effect" means that people overestimate the likelihood that their actions or appearances will be noticed by others, and overestimate the impact of their words on others. In our world, we are the absolute protagonists, but in other people's world, we are only an insignificant passer-by in the background-but it is easy to forget this.

"Malicious attribution bias" means that when people feel that they are always under the supervision and evaluation of others, they overestimate their chances of being noticed by others, and therefore tend to think that other people's behavior is "against people and things" and "deliberately against me." For example, if a colleague doesn't say hello to him or her, it may be because he or she is upset about work, or simply doesn't notice him or her, but malicious attribution bias people always assume that this is definitely because his or her colleagues have a problem with him or her.

These two biases not only make it easier to think that someone is watching me, but they also make us think that this gaze may be malicious.

These two biases may make us think that other people are staring at us maliciously| Giphy Conclusion Maybe next time you can find a partner and try this experiment yourself.

Whatever the outcome, it will give you a better understanding of the scientific process.

like the end of Titchener's 1898 paper--

"All in all, I've tested this 'feeling of being stared at' at different times and in different experiments. These subjects either claimed to be able to perceive being stared at or to "stare until someone turns around uncomfortably." Experiments always give negative results for this perception or ability.

If the scientific reader thinks that the result is entirely predictable, it is a waste of time to experiment. I can only reply that, in my opinion, such an experiment would make sense in order to break a widespread superstition among the masses. No scientifically minded psychologist believes in telepathy. At the same time, disproving telepathy may drive a student to start on the right scientific path, and thus the time spent may be rewarded a hundredfold in future science. "

references

[1]Titchener, E. B. (1898). The'Feeling of Being Stared at'. Science, 8(208), 895-897.

[2]Coover, J. E. (1913). " The Feeling of Being Stared at": Experimental. The American Journal of Psychology, 24(4), 570-575.

[3]Braud, W. G., Shafer, D., & Andrews, S. (1993). Further studies of autonomic detection of remote staring, new control procedures, and personality correlates. Journal of Parapsychology, 57, 391 - 409.

[4]Braud, W. G., Shafer, D., & Andrews, S. (1993). Reactions to an unseen gaze (remote attention): A review, with new data on autonomic staring detection. Journal of Parapsychology, 57, 373 - 390.

[5]Schmidt, S., Schneider, R., Utts, J., & Walach, H. (2004). Distant intentionality and the feeling of being stared at: Two meta‐analyses. British Journal of Psychology, 95(2), 235-247.

[6]Sheldrake, R. (2005). The sense of being stared at--part 1: Is it real or illusory?. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 12(6), 10-31.

[7]Gilovich, T., Medvec, V. H., & Savitsky, K. (2000). The spotlight effect in social judgment: an egocentric bias in estimates of the salience of one's own actions and appearance. Journal of personality and social psychology, 78(2), 211.

[8]Kramer, R. M. (1994). The sinister attribution error: Paranoid cognition and collective distrust in organizations. Motivation and emotion, 18(2), 199-230.

[9]Waytz, A. (2013). The Feeling of Being Stared At. Retrieved from https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/moral-universe/the-feeling-of-being-stared-at

[10]Psychic staring effect - Wikipedia. Retrieved fromhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychic_staring_effect

This article comes from Weixin Official Accounts: Fruit Shell (ID: Guokr42), Author: You Zhiyou, Editor: Small Towel

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