 Looking at me?
Why are we always able to sense it when someone is looking at us?
Joe, Singapore
The human eye. Photo courtesy of Che and Wikipedia.
Readers' Answer:
A steady gaze or stare is interpreted as a challenge or
precursor to attack. Our first reaction is panic as a survival technique. When
we first see the stare, because we have only four muscles to converge and focus,
there is a time delay in getting range, focus and an image created in our mind.
This lead us to imagine that we had prior knowledge of the fact that we were
being looked at.
Bruce Wilkerson, Centennial, Colorado USA
It just appears that way. We statistically probably only
catch 50% of the "someone" looking at us. But it seems like 100%,since we don't
miss what we don't catch.
Paul Wright of Decatur, Georgia,
USA
According to the psychology mind is considered as having
its own characteristics. Always the mind will be having some thought. Everybody
have one or the other form of the fear in their mind. Mind will be active via
senses. So feeling is also a sense. The internal state of mind sometimes will be
having some assumptions that somebody is watching me. Some times without having
anybody near to us, we may feel someone is there and looking us. So it all
depends on the perception of the individuals mind towards the real world.
Hemanth Kumar, India
We sense someone is watching with our eyes. When I
walk outside, I only sense someone watching me because, when I walk, my eyes
move in all directions. So if anyone is watching me and in front of me, I
can surely see him, and send the message to my brain.
But if I have a mental feeling that someone is watching me, like a fear, I
think that I could make a wrong assumption that someone is actually watching me.
I think its a mind-eye coordination that's at work.
Krishnan, Trivamdrum, Kerala, India
"Why are we ALWAYS able to sense..." offers a hint of an answer that
doesn't bring mysticism into play. The fact is, we don't ALWAYS know when we are
being watched or looked at. If that were the case, we would all be neurotic and
paranoid as we are watched or looked at whenever we are in public.
The fact is that behavioural psychology has long known that the most powerful
re-enforcer is one that is somewhat random (referred to as the "variable ratio
schedule"). By this I mean, if we are proven right on a varied or randomed basis, we begin to create a belief system, start to look for examples
of this belief being correct and filtering out examples of when it is proven to
be wrong. For example, the times were look behind us because we feel we are being watched
and then see that nobody is looking at us is not included in the pursuit of
defending and proving the belief. It is human nature to look for pattern, when it
is not necessarily there.
We want to believe that we can know when we are being watched, in order to have some power or sense of control over our
environment so that we don't feel so vulnerable. It is the root of magic and
mystical thinking. To state that we ALWAYS know is evidence that we like to
create certainty.
Now, having said that , Rupert Sheldrake (biologist), has produced some
extraordinary work showing that there may very well be some validity in the idea
of sensing someone watching us. It is is highly probable some dogs know when their owner is coming home, even if its an
unusually timed return, . The connection between this and the
"being able to sense.." are obvious. The fact is, nobody knows why
dogs can sense their owner's return. Some posit "telepathic waves" between people and animals, morphogenic
fields, the collective unconscious, and all sorts of other un-provable ideas.
Some maintain that it is random and the experiments are faulty. I would
suggest that the explanation of the behaviourists explain 99% of cases. The
other 1% is beyond reason, at least at present.
Colan Mitchell, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
That we "sense" that someone is watching us, is true "in a
sense."
In actuality, our brain is receiving an extraordinary amount of information
through our senses all day long. We are unable to attend to that much
information and still function as we know it. Our brain learns which information
is important through life experience---ex. we don't pay attention to the sound
of traffic going down the street as it becomes routine, but we do notice an
accident (the sound is different---our brain says---pay attention---this might
be important to our survival).
So, our brain notices something is different through one or more of our
senses when someone is staring at us---this might be important, so it brings our
attention to it. We either get "creeped out" and move away from the person, or
we are surprised by someone we know who was trying to get our attention
non-verbally.
Women, by the way, have a much better "sixth sense" than men because the
corpus callosum (the bundle of nerves that connects the 2 hemispheres in brain)
is larger. This allows their brain to communicate about the information gathered
more quickly and efficiently. Theory is---our survival depends a little more on
our smarts than our brawn, while a man is more likely to be able to fight his
way out of danger.
Elizabeth Montgomery-Lewis, West Chester,
Pennsylvania, USA
(Answered August 11, 2008)
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