You’ve probably had a sensation at least once in your life that made you turn around and check your surroundings.
If so, you’re not alone; between 68%-94% of people report having this feeling at some point.
The hairs might raise on the back of your neck, or maybe it’s a tingle or just a feeling you can’t shake – but can humans really sense someone watching them?
Scientists and researchers have been investigating the phenomenon since 1898, when Cornell psychology professor Edward Titchener wanted answers.
“Every year I find a certain proportion of students, in my junior classes, who are firmly persuaded that they can ‘feel’ that they are being stared at from behind, and a smaller proportion who believe that, by persistent gazing at the back of the neck, they have the power of making a person seated in front of them turn round and look them in the face.”
Being able to prove something like this existed would basically be proving the existence of extra-sensory perception, and no one has been able to do it yet.
But although tons of research has been done, no evidence has ever come to light that suggests it’s a real thing.
A 1993 review of research done in 1912-1913 found that people were no better at trying to detect someone staring than guessing at the same thing.
“Overall, the subjects accuracy of guessing did not depart significantly from chance. Coover interpreted his findings as support for Titchener’s claim that the belief in staring detection was empirically groundless.”
In 1959, the opposite results seemed to emerge.
“He reported a preliminary staring detection study in which he himself attempted to guess whether or not he was being stared at by another experimenter. He achieved a 59.55 percent accuracy rate which he called ‘suggestive and highly promising.'”
Experiments always seemed to fall into one camp or another, and would usually support whatever the researchers believed going into it.
Experts point out that this phenomenon is common within parapsychology.
“Such ‘experimenter effects’ are common within parapsychology and are open to several competing interpretations. For example, Schlitz’s study may have contained an experimental artifact absent from Wiseman’s procedure.”
They are referring to an experiment in which the psychologist found evidence against the phenomenon while a parapsychologist found evidence for, even though they were both using the same data pool.
In a 2000 article, David Marks and John Colwell say there was likely a flaw in the way the experiment was designed.
“Doing science in a controlled and thoughtful manner is a challenging and tricky operation. This is especially true of research on the paranormal, where the claims are difficult to prove because the effects are small and unreliable.”
In order for scientific studies to be taken seriously, they need to include things like randomization, double-blind controls, cueing, and independent judges, among other things.
Most of the studies into this phenomenon lack some or all of those parameters, yet many will believe based on their own lived experience.
Most experts, like Harriet Dempsey-Jones, a neuroscience researcher, think there’s not much evidence there.
“Sadly for those who wish we were X-men, it appears much of the body of research supporting the ‘psychic staring effect’ appears to be suffering from methodological issues, or unexplained experimenter effects. It is almost certainly an unconscious bias, perhaps due to initial interactions with the experimenter.”
Or, it could be that we’re gaslighting ourselves.
“If you feel like you are being watched, and turn around to check – another person in your field of view might notice you looking around and shift their gaze to you. When your eyes meet, you assume this individual has been looking all along.”
Confirmation bias is a real thing, so when we do look around and catch someone staring, it reinforces that belief.
So you’re probably just being paranoid.