The darkest moment of high school is when you are playing with your table mates during evening self-study, and you suddenly feel a chill in your back.
You turn your head curiously, but you catch up on the teacher who happens to be standing at the back door of the classroom. There is embarrassment in the air, and you hasten to pretend to be serious about your homework.
It's been a long time since you've been stared at by this kind of "caring" gaze when you've grown up, but at certain moments, like watching a thriller movie or walking alone on the road at night, you will have a strange feeling in the back of your neck that makes you suspect that there is a pair of eyes staring at you behind you.
So, can we really feel that someone is staring at us behind us? Do we have eyes behind our backs?
Experiments that specialize in "staring at people",
The conclusions are not uniform
Between 70% and 97% of people surveyed in Europe and North America have experienced the sensation of being stared at, and sometimes, they have been able to make someone turn around by staring at someone [1].
This feeling may seem universal, but it is not easy to scientifically prove its existence. Since the end of the 19th century, psychologists have conducted a series of experiments to "stare at people", but until now there has been no unified conclusion.
In 1898, psychologist Edward Tichin conducted the first experiment, but did not find the existence of a "sense of being gazed" [2]. In the 20th century, mainstream psychologists conducted a number of experiments, but also found no evidence of the existence of such feelings.
In one experiment in 1913, participants closed their eyes and turned their backs to the experimenter, who randomly decided whether to stare at them. After 1000 guesses, the participants' guesses were 50.2% correct, which was only slightly higher than the probability of random guesses (50%), which is not a valid indication that people accurately perceive being stared at [3].
The same was true of a 2000 study, which found that most people did not realize that they were being stared at, whether researchers were secretly observing people in public places or through one-way mirrors in the laboratory [4].
Subject sits with his back to the one-way mirror, which is the view of the observer staring at the subject from the other side of the one-way mirror / [4]
While many mainstream psychologists are skeptical of the "feeling of being stared at," some parapsychologists believe that this feeling exists. Since the 80s of the 20th century, some parapsychological studies have yielded positive results through closed-circuit television experiments [1].
Imagine you're being left alone in one room while another person is in a different room staring at you through a surveillance device. Instead of asking you if you feel like you're being stared at, the researchers measure your electrical skin response directly, like a lie detector [1]. They will use the changes in your physiological response to determine whether you are unconsciously feeling the gaze of others.
Experiments by parapsychologists often point out that the physiological responses of the participants, despite their own unawareness, are able to reveal the existence of a "sense of being gazed".
Parapsychology has received little attention from mainstream psychology and studies a range of phenomena known as the paranormal, including near-death experiences, prophecies, remote vision, and telepathy[5] / Diagram Worm Creativity
However, a 2004 summary study of 15 closed-circuit television experiments showed that, while some data suggest the presence of gaze, these effects are usually small, and the quality of the studies has been uneven, making the reliability of the results questionable [5].
I feel like I'm being watched,
It may just be a psychological effect
At present, there is still controversy about whether people are able to perceive the invisible gaze [6].
Parapsychologists claim that since the time of hominids, humans have been able to perceive themselves being stared at. This ability is used to warn of potential dangers, such as attacks by wild beasts. But skeptics deny this claim, arguing that the sensation is more likely to be an unconscious reaction to subtle signals in the environment than some supernatural phenomenon [4].
In a dark room, the slightest smell, air movement, or temperature change can make us feel that someone is nearby, even if we don't see him[4] / Pexels
You can think back to your high school days, maybe it's just because of the teacher's slight footsteps, breathing, or the change in the expressions of the classmates next to you, and the classroom slowly quiets down, that you realize that you have the teacher's "concerning" gaze behind you, not that you have some special superpower.
But these subtle physical cues can cause us to fear what's behind us and make us believe that there is an invisible gaze. Anxiety or nervousness amplifies this feeling and increases our vigilance [6].
In such a situation, we may mistake our subjective experience for a real event happening externally, and feel that "there are always people who want to harm us". For example, if we feel something strange on our skin, we may mistakenly think it's because someone is looking at us, even though no one is actually doing it. This over-interpretation of subjective experience can evolve into more complex psychological phenomena, such as hallucinations [3].
In addition, there are psychologists who believe that people usually have an instinctive tension in their backs. This tension can lead to a phenomenon of "self-fulfilling prophecy": a person turns back because he suspects that someone is staring at him from behind, and this action instead attracts the attention of those behind him, thus validating the feeling of being stared at [2].
We can't see what's going on behind us directly, and someone else can sneak up from behind, which makes us feel insecure in the back / Pexels
It's like your teacher has just come in through the back door of the classroom, but you turn your head inexplicably, and the whole class hasn't turned their heads, but you've turned around!
In 2023, some scholars referred to the above ideas and tried to provide users with a "sense of being gazed" through virtual reality (VR), and they did.
The study induces a "sense of being gazed" in two main ways: through environmental factors such as darkness, the presence or absence of characters, a red color palette, and suspenseful background music, and through stimuli such as subtle visual and auditory changes and tactile sensations on the back of the neck.
The participant is solving a puzzle while the NPC is staring at the participant behind their backs / [6]
The results showed that people did feel being stared at in these well-designed virtual environments, and this feeling seemed to be the result of a combination of environmental and stimuli [6].
And this "gaze" will also enhance the immersion and realism of virtual reality, elevating your gaming experience. Imagine being able to feel an enemy staring at you from behind your back while you're immersed in a gunplay game, and you'll be able to react faster and save your life.
You don't have eyes behind you,
In fact, even if you are blind, you can "see"
While the "sense of being stared" may be an illusion, our brains do see things we don't know we're looking at, as is the case with the phenomenon of "blind sight" [7].
Medical cases in this area, although clinically considered blind, are still able to respond to visual stimuli, indicating that the human brain has some kind of unconscious visual processing ability.
As early as 1917, a military doctor discovered blindness among soldiers. The soldiers had damaged visual cortex, but said they saw the movement of objects and would describe the appearance of these objects as "shadowy gray" or "shadow-like" [8].
In 1974, a scholar formally studied the phenomenon of blindness and found that blind patients do have residual visual consciousness [9]. In a dimly lit room, the investigator had the patient place his chin on a bracket, making sure the eye position was fixed, and then flashing light spots intermittently in his blind zone. Although the patient says he cannot see the point of light, his finger always points exactly where the point is when asked to point at the light source.
When sleeping, even if the eyes are closed, strong light can still be perceived through the eyelids, but in people with damaged visual cortex, the brain cannot process this light information like a normal person / Unsplash
As the experiment progressed, the researcher increased the difficulty, showing horizontal or vertical lines in the patient's blind spot and asking him to guess the direction of these lines. After several tests, the investigators found that the patient had the ability to correctly recognize visual stimuli and ruled out the possibility that he was guessing randomly. In the new experiment, he was even able to distinguish the color of light in the blind zone [9].
The patient's brain is still able to detect different patterns of light, but it is unable to consciously see it, and the residual vision is likely unconscious. A 2023 study also showed that blindness is an unconscious perception [8].
While the "feeling of being stared at" may be an illusion, your perception is more complex than you think, so the next time you feel something different, it's okay to look back.