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Is Someone Staring at You?

© Copyright 2003, Jim Loy

I received email claiming that the feeling that people are staring at you is strong evidence of psychic phenomena. Let's think about a few scenarios:

1. Assume that no one is staring at me. But I have this feeling that someone is. I turn around, and no one is there. Strange, I could have sworn. I may attribute the incident to ghosts, or it is more likely that I will just forget the incident. Either way, I am not dealing with negative evidence in a logical manner. Maybe it was a ghost, or someone behind that mirror, or the government has concealed a miniature camera. But the evidence is that no one was staring at me. And I should remember that as negative evidence.
2. I'm sitting in a room, and there are people behind me. I get a feeling that someone is staring at me. I turn around, and sure enough, some are staring at me, now. I called attention to myself by turning around to stare at them. Of course they stare at me.
3. I'm trying to read the title on a book on a shelf, just over that guy's shoulder. He turns around and thinks that I'm staring at him. I may even look at him, wondering why he is looking at me.
4. I enter an empty room at the library, and sit down to read. Then I get a feeling that someone is in the room. Sure enough there is a person in another chair, maybe staring at me, maybe not. I'm sure that he was staring at me before I turned around. Almost certainly, this person made a sound, which I picked up on subconsciously, but did not notice consciously.
5. In the previous example, the hairs on the back of my neck (or arms) may have stood up. Maybe I didn't notice this consciously, but this is interpreted by my body as a warning of danger. It can be caused by fear, or by a breeze, or by electric charge.
6. I see out of the corner of my eye that someone is looking in my direction. But I may not be consciously aware that I have noticed this; it may be subconscious. So it may not be psychic at all to correctly notice that someone is staring at you.
7. I see someone who I recognize, sort of. Who is that? I met her in college or somewhere. Then she turns around and catches me staring at her. Oops, nobody that I know.

I answered the above email by mentioning a double blind experiment reported in the Skeptical Inquirer. People were tested to see if they could tell if people were staring at them. Sometimes people stared at them, sometimes not. The results suggested that people could not tell when they were being stared at. This person responded with angry contempt for the Skeptical Inquirer. But no matter what a person thinks of the Skeptical Inquirer, these people did a logical, valid experiment, with results that should be taken seriously. But he would rather believe anecdotal, subjective evidence.

The traditional response to the possibility of being wrong is anger.

A double blind experiment is one in which neither the people being tested nor the experimenters know the correct answers. This is done so that the experimenters do not give unconscious clues to the person being tested. This idea is extremely important in all of science. Even when testing physical phenomena, it is important that the experimenters not be allowed to influence the results, consciously or unconsciously. It is especially important when a person or animal is being tested. But psychic investigators seem mostly incapable of conducting such tests.

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