How are humans able to “sense” we are being watched?
In: Biology
We cannot sense we are being watched, but from an evolutionary standpoint, it makes sense to pay attention to detail on a subconscious level. We “get” a lot more of our surroundings than we think we do. But our brain is very good at commenting out the unnecessary parts. But a predatory animal staring at you, that is something really necessary to be aware.
/and it is ind of biased too. If you “feel” you are being watched, look around and no one is watching, you dont mind. But if you catch someone looking, then you feel validated. There WAS someone watching.
Not by any “supernatural” means. But the brain can pick up subtle clues that there is somebody nearby that, individually, do not make it through the pipeline to our alert-presence cortex, but can “simmer” a bit in the depth of the brain and then in sum generate a conscious feeling that there might be somebody nearby. This can be subtle sounds, even breathing, or rustles of clothes, or the smell of a person, things like that.
And our primordial prey-brain will then start to think that there might be a predator nearby watching us. Which is why we identify the feeling of it the way we do.
Disclaimer: this is my “informed” opinion based on a general science background, I am not a behavior expert nor have I read anything specific about this.
They cant. Its pure confirmation bias. https://new.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3pv6ly/eli5_why_can_people_sense_when_they_are_being/
Remember to search first.
There’s different ways. Maybe you see a shadow move out of the corner of your eye at night. Maybe you hear some twigs breaking. Maybe the noise around you suddenly goes quiet. Not a guarantee you’re being watched, but they have something in common with the times you aren’t being watched.
Survivorship Bias coupled with a likely genetic trait that makes people more apt to look out for being watched.
in my experience, the feeling of being watched is almost always a sense that someone is nearby, not watching me remotely.
A blind person with experience can often tell when they are approaching a wall. A sighted person can do it if they really concentrate. The point is, we have subliminal input from lots of senses, like smell and sound, that we aren’t conscious of, but if someone is standing still 10 feet behind us, we might feel their presence before we “know it”. When that happens, there is a certain, skin-crawly realization as the lag hits the consciousness. That’s my take.
The majority of cases. though, where you might feel someone is looking at you, you search and see someone looking at you at some distance, seems like simple confirmation bias. But don’t under-rate your subliminal perception.
its like our brains have a built-in spy detector or something. you ever just feel like someone’s staring at you and you turn around? wild stuff
Subtle clues that someone is there, perhaps out of sight, such as shadows, sounds, air movement, smells, the behavior of other people within eye sight, etc…
Our brains take in a lot more information to parse than we are consciously aware of.
Thousands of tiny sensory clues, all of them scientific and all of them pretty unreliable in experiments.
We don’t always notice if we sense something in reality, we may have felt, smelled, heard, or seen something. Imagine you’re walking next to a bush, and it moves, pushed by the wind—your brain will simply ignore it. But if there is no wind and it moves, your brain will alert you that something unusual has happened. Your brain constantly ignores hundreds of things as long as they seem ‘normal,’ but when something happens that ‘shouldn’t,’ it’s your brain signaling that something is wrong. This makes you more alert, encouraging you to search for possible danger.
Latest Answers