I just thought it was funny how you could be minding your business, then instinctively turn to the side and see someone turning away cause they were looking at you. You probably had no clue someone was looking at you, but you turned your head to look directly at someone who was anyway. How does this happen?
In: Biology
You can’t, you just forget the times you had the feeling someone was watching you, you looked, and no one was. Alternately, you noticed something like a reflection, sound, or something else out of the corner of your eye.
There is no magic, but reality is pretty cool.
That “instinct” is your peripheral vision detecting movement. So you turn in the direction and awkwardly lock eyes.
Sound also plays a huge part in think. Because you can detect where sounds come from very well. Or where sounds aren’t coming from you can kinda feel dead areas where something might be blocking sounds
You’re constantly scanning for any kind of threat with your peripheral vision even if you’re not aware of it. Some things (like peripheral motion or eyes looking at you) are processed basically by hard-wired circuits in your brain which then cause you to outright look there to make sure.
People (as most animals) are extremely good at noticing someone or something looking at them and this already happens deep inside your visual processing circuits, without your consciousness being involved at all, in a kind of pattern recognition. It’s a survival instinct. Your conscious brain then only feels a kind of “tug” forcing you to turn your head around and take a real look.
Our brain has evolved to sense changes in our environment, including movement and gaze. When someone is looking at us or standing too close, our brain detects these changes and signals us to turn our attention to them. It’s a survival mechanism that has helped us avoid potential threats and dangers.
There’s a book about it: The sense of being stared at. The author, Rupert Sheldrake, is a very free spirited scientist who refuses to accept dogma just so and insists on coming up with trials when a subject interests him. Mainstream science hates him.
FWIW it’s a known phenomenon. When I was in the Army one of the TM’s literally instructed us not to look at the back of their head when you’re sneaking up on somebody from behind, because they might sense it.
From the wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychic_staring_effect#:~:text=The%20psychic%20staring%20effect%20(sometimes,to%20detect%20being%20stared%20at.
The **psychic staring effect** (sometimes called **scopaesthesia**) is the claimed [extrasensory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrasensory) ability of a person to detect being [stared](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staring) at. The idea was first explored by psychologist [Edward B. Titchener](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_B._Titchener) in 1898 after students in his junior classes reported being able to “feel” when somebody was looking at them, even though they could not see this person. Titchener performed a series of laboratory experiments that found only negative results.[^([1])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychic_staring_effect#cite_note-titchener-1) The effect has been the subject of contemporary attention from [parapsychologists](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parapsychologists) and other researchers from the 1980s onwards, most notably [Rupert Sheldrake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake).[^([2])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychic_staring_effect#cite_note-SheldrakeResearch-2)[^([3])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychic_staring_effect#cite_note-enc-3)[^([4])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychic_staring_effect#cite_note-Lobach2004-4)
The feeling is a common one, being reported by over two thirds of the students questioned in a 1913 study.[^([5])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychic_staring_effect#cite_note-coover-5)
For me at least it’s the presence of the person displacing open air/empty space and subtly changing the ambient noise in the area.
Sound, a human is a large, moving sound absorber as well as producer.
If someone walks between you and ambient noise from that direction the person absorbs and blocks some of that sound.
In quiet spaces we also breathe, movement causes friction between fabrics and skin, shoes tap or squeak.
I have a visually impaired coworker who can tell us apart by our normal everyday sounds. They snap their fingers when approaching a doorway to cue us that they’re there so we don’t just go rushing around the corner and collide.
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