This article is part of the section The Conversation Jniorin which specialists from the main universities and research centers answer the questions of curious young people between 12 and 16 years old. You can send your questions to tcesjunior@theconversation.com
Question from Rubn, 13 years old. IES Alonso Cano (Granada)
Surely it has happened to you before: you are in class or riding the bus and, suddenly, you have that strange feeling that someone is looking at you. You turn around and discover that you’re not wrong, someone really is!
This phenomenon is known as escopaesthesia and has sparked a lot of curiosity in neuroscience. And although there are neurobiological and psychological factors that could be involved, there is no solid scientific evidence to prove that we really have a special ability to sense gazes.
The scientific debate
Rupert Sheldrake, a British researcher, has done several experiments to test whether we can really feel that we are being watched. In his studiespeople seemed to be more accurate than expected when guessing whether someone was looking at them, which led him to think that there might be something special about this skill.
But other scientists, such as David Marks and John Colwell, disagree. They believe that Sheldrake’s results could be due to errors in the organization of his experiments.
Specifically, Marks and Colwell discovered that certain patterns are repeated in these trials: it is possible that the participants they learned them and they would get it right more easily when they were asked if they were being watched.
The brain is always alert
In any case, one of the factors that could explain this sensation is that we are designed to be constantly vigilant, even when we are not consciously paying attention. This alert system, called exogenous attentionis the brain’s ability to react automatically to sudden stimuli or changes in our environment. With its help we detect what is happening around us, such as unexpected movements or changes in light.
Exogenous attention has been crucial to the survival of our species. Imagine that you are a primitive human in the middle of a forest. If you were not able to quickly detect the gaze of a predator or another human being, you could be in danger.
Although we don’t have to worry as much about predators these days, we are still very good at picking up on small cues in the environment, such as the movement of another person’s eyes. Even if we don’t consciously notice it, these signals can trigger our brain to trigger the feeling that we are being watched.
The role of vision
Peripheral vision, that is, what we see outside the center of our field of vision, such as objects or movements that appear at the ends of our vision, is another factor that could explain this curious phenomenon that is scopasesthesia.
Although it is not as clear as central vision, it is excellent at detecting movement and changes in the environment, meaning that our subconscious could detect that someone is watching us.
In other words: if someone around us is moving their eyes or turning their head to look at us, our peripheral vision could capture that small movement, even if we are not completely aware of it. And in turn, this could cause our brain to alert us that someone is watching us.
mirror neurons
The human brain also has an incredible ability to understand the actions and emotions of other people. This is possible thanks to brain circuits in which the mirror neuronswhich are activated when we perform an action or when we see someone do the same and, without talking to them, we understand what they are doing. These neurons are very involved in empath and in the interpretation of the intentions of others.
It could be that, in certain social situations, mirror neurons help us detect if someone is watching us, since they serve to sense or understand other people’s intentions in an almost automatic way.
Thus, when someone looks at us, our brain could be processing that information, even without us consciously knowing it.
We are the navel of the world
Sometimes we think that everyone is aware of what we do and whether we do it right or wrong. Or we are so egocentric that we consider ourselves the navel of the world. This phenomenon is known as the effect spotlight.
When we are in new or uncomfortable situations, we tend to think that others are paying attention to us more than they really do. For example, if you arrive late to class, you probably feel like everyone is watching you, even though most of your classmates don’t even notice you coming.
Does our mind play with us?
Another possible psychological explanation is the confirmation bias. This phenomenon occurs when we search for, interpret or remember information that confirms what we already believe. That is, we tend to believe what we want to believe.
If you think someone is watching you, you are likely to pay more attention to any small movement or gesture that confirms it. Additionally, if you have ever had the experience of feeling like someone was paying attention to you and then discovered that it was true, you may have conditioned your brain to have the same feeling in similar situations. And this is when our mind plays tricks on us, making us feel like we are being watched when in reality we are not.
Paranoia is something more serious
In more extreme cases, the sensation of receiving other people’s gaze may be related to a slight paranoiaespecially in those who suffer from anxiety or feel insecure in social situations. These people can interpret any small gesture as a sign that they are being judged or watched, which reinforces the feeling of being watched.
But calm downthat feeling like someone is watching you doesn’t necessarily mean you’re paranoid. From everything we have explained before, scopaesthesia is a common experience and, in most cases, it simply occurs because our brain is doing its job of keeping us attentive and alert.
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