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July 03, 2009 04:02 AM
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Very interesting question again stanar,
This is one of my favorite topics, usually referred to as Psychic Staring Effect, or Scopaesthesia
Of course nobody really knows for certain, but my personal take on this is this....
It is fair to assume that evolution is an ongoing process, even today we are still slowly but surely going through the process of slowely evolving. If this is true, and we recognize that we have evolved the sense of sight over millions of years, as well as hearing etc, then it is logical to assume that we will continue to develop more senses eventually, some of which may be just barely usable, just as sight didn't happen overnight, any new sense we develop may take millions of years to fully develop and be only partially usable at the moment.
Imagine what it must have been like as the sense of sight was slowly developing. At certain times people would claim to see things when most could not, and the effectiveness would be very intermittent and widely misunderstood and hard to comprehend.
I think we're at the early stages of developing this telepathic sense.
To find out more you should check out
The Sense Of Being Stared At: by Rupert Sheldrake
Rupert has been studying this for a while and has come up with an interesting result..
"people are generally able to predict whether they are being stared at with 55% success, except when controls for experimenter bias are included as part of the experiment. This is 5% above probability. Whether 5% is statistically relevant is discussed heavily in the Journal of Consciousness Studies issue on this subject."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Psychic_Staring_Effect
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We sense someone looking at us because there are numerous cues... and we have millions of years of survival in our genetic code. If we were out on the tundra and didn't know we were being watched by the sabertooth tiger, we wouldn't be here, would we?
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As soon as I put that finger in, I've got a marching band in a school bus, some hot supermodels and a noseless old woman staring at me.
Your brain is taking in sensory data every split second. Nearly all of this data is never relayed to your consciousness. You don't feel the thousands of hairs moving on your body right now. You don't hear yourself breathing usually, nor feel the contracting of each and every muscle in your body from second to second.
The question is why did your brain decide to tell you that someone was watching.
Try to keep track of how many times you look around and don't see someone watching. If you are always correct, then you should only need to look in exactly one direction to see the first person watching. Afterall, there are an infinite amount of directions to look for someone watching you if you turn your head in a 360 degree circle. The chances of seeing someone else's eyes are pretty high.
Source(s):
late night ramblings
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How do we sense when someone is looking at us while stopping at a traffic light?
I bet almost everyone had this experience. When stopping at a traffic light, we can sense if the person in the other car looks at us.
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| July 03, 2009 08:40 AM |
This is one of my favorite topics, usually referred to as Psychic Staring Effect, or Scopaesthesia
Of course nobody really knows for certain, but my personal take on this is this....
It is fair to assume that evolution is an ongoing process, even today we are still slowly but surely going through the process of slowely evolving. If this is true, and we recognize that we have evolved the sense of sight over millions of years, as well as hearing etc, then it is logical to assume that we will continue to develop more senses eventually, some of which may be just barely usable, just as sight didn't happen overnight, any new sense we develop may take millions of years to fully develop and be only partially usable at the moment.
Imagine what it must have been like as the sense of sight was slowly developing. At certain times people would claim to see things when most could not, and the effectiveness would be very intermittent and widely misunderstood and hard to comprehend.
I think we're at the early stages of developing this telepathic sense.
To find out more you should check out
The Sense Of Being Stared At: by Rupert Sheldrake
Rupert has been studying this for a while and has come up with an interesting result..
"people are generally able to predict whether they are being stared at with 55% success, except when controls for experimenter bias are included as part of the experiment. This is 5% above probability. Whether 5% is statistically relevant is discussed heavily in the Journal of Consciousness Studies issue on this subject."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Psychic_Staring_Effect
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• Clearly we are not sure what it is all about.
- Is it due to our residual sense we developed during our life in the wild?
- Is it due to a new sense we are developing as part of the evolution?
- Is it due to paranoia/a sense of awareness that everybody is watching us always or when we do certain personal acts out in public?
- Is it due to brain waves or stumli we pick up around us?
For now we an go with research based results.
- Is it due to our residual sense we developed during our life in the wild?
- Is it due to a new sense we are developing as part of the evolution?
- Is it due to paranoia/a sense of awareness that everybody is watching us always or when we do certain personal acts out in public?
- Is it due to brain waves or stumli we pick up around us?
For now we an go with research based results.
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Other Answers (4)
July 03, 2009 04:06 AM
Our unconscious is much more aware of things than our conscious. If we didn't have this mechanism, we would be overwhelmed by all the incoming stimuli. Our conscious allows us to filter out most of that stimuli so we can function. We sense someone looking at us because there are numerous cues... and we have millions of years of survival in our genetic code. If we were out on the tundra and didn't know we were being watched by the sabertooth tiger, we wouldn't be here, would we?
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July 03, 2009 06:14 AM
wow thanks Matt.... that makes soooo much sense... always wondered what made us turn only to find someone looking at us.... even weirder when you both turn at the same time.
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July 03, 2009 04:10 AM
I only get that feeling when I'm picking my nose at the light. If I'm not picking my nose and look around, no one is watching. As soon as I put that finger in, I've got a marching band in a school bus, some hot supermodels and a noseless old woman staring at me.
Your brain is taking in sensory data every split second. Nearly all of this data is never relayed to your consciousness. You don't feel the thousands of hairs moving on your body right now. You don't hear yourself breathing usually, nor feel the contracting of each and every muscle in your body from second to second.
The question is why did your brain decide to tell you that someone was watching.
Try to keep track of how many times you look around and don't see someone watching. If you are always correct, then you should only need to look in exactly one direction to see the first person watching. Afterall, there are an infinite amount of directions to look for someone watching you if you turn your head in a 360 degree circle. The chances of seeing someone else's eyes are pretty high.
Source(s):
late night ramblings
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Please mark this as "interesting", so that it gets more interesting answers.
I never thought there would be stats related to this effect. Thanks.