Why Do You Feel Someone Staring at You?

Chances are, at one time or another, you’ve had the feeling that someone is staring at you, as though another person’s gaze is a tangible beam. You may even look and find that to be the case. Or perhaps you’re the one doing the staring, and avoid doing it for too long for fear the object of your attention will whip around and catch you.

This phenomenon is known as scopaesthesia, or the psychic staring effect, defined as the ability to tell when someone is looking at us. But is it real?

Sixth Sense or Nixed Sense?

That question of how this “sixth sense” works, or if we even have one at all, remains a subject of dispute between parapsychologists (who study psychic phenomena such as telekinesis and clairvoyance) and skeptics. There are studies on the topic dating back to the late 19th century, but none have been accepted by mainstream science.

In 1898, psychologist Edward B. Titchener wrote that his students described the sensation as a stiffness at the base of their neck, “sometimes accompanied by a tingling.” He never fully detailed the experiments he ran at Cornell University, but wrote that he found no evidence of psychic abilities. He posited that people turning to see if someone’s staring is what attracts the other person’s attention in the first place, creating the illusion that they’d been caught looking. 

Later studies found that the accuracy of subjects who could identify when they were being looked at was no better than chance, while other studies reported small but statistically significant accuracy. In 1993, researchers suggested in the Journal of Parapsychology that experiments shouldn’t ask subjects to guess if they’re being watched, but should instead monitor an involuntary physical response, such as electrodermal activity (changes in the skin’s ability to conduct electricity).

Studying the staring effect this way has led to mixed results. Researchers from the University of Freiburg and University of Northampton found that subjects showed significantly higher skin activity when they were stared at, despite not knowing when this was occurring during the experiment. 

Other researchers have concluded that studies concerning the staring effect are influenced by experimenter bias. One study published in the Journal of Parapsychology found that proponents of parapsychology unconsciously influence subjects’ responses through subtle cues and interactions, whereas skeptics conducting the same tests with the same subjects yielded different results.

Yet if scopaesthesia isn’t real, what explains this sensation that so many people claim to have experienced?

Looking for Cues

For starters, it’s possible we only remember when we’ve turned around and someone was staring at us (versus when we’ve turned around and nothing was there), reinforcing the belief we have the ability to tell. Professor Colin Clifford at the University of Sydney has another theory, published in Current Biology: that we think people are staring even when they’re not. 

His team’s study concluded that human brains are wired to believe we’re being watched, even (and especially) when we lack the data to confirm it — for instance, when it’s dark or someone’s wearing sunglasses.

This would make sense, evolutionarily speaking. By being able to sense subtle cues — such as someone in our peripheral vision, a reflection, or a change in the direction of sound they’re making — we can better protect ourselves from attack. This may not be particularly useful when you’re riding an elevator, but it would be very helpful to early humans traversing dark jungles filled with predators. 

Over time, evolution may have wired our brains to “look without looking” — a defensive mechanism that in our modern society can misinterpret external cues and make us a bit paranoid that danger lurks just out of view.

Then again, we may have evolved it for a very different reason: to communicate and understand one another better. By having a honed sense of where someone else was looking and picking up on other subtle signals, early humans could better coordinate hunting and defense, as well as teach skills and share other social cues. 

The fact that human eyes have more contrast between the white sclera and black pupils may even make it easier for us to notice slight changes in visual attention, even in the far periphery. This skill may be why you can sense someone barely in your line of sight turning their gaze toward you.

Then again, they might not be looking at you at all. Maybe the staring effect is just us wanting to feel like the main character sometimes.