How can one feel that they’re being observed or followed?

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It’s pretty common in movies, that kind of “sixth sense” where people can feel a presence around them, that may be observing or following them.
It actually happened to me in real life a couple times, where I was right about that guess.
Do humans have a “sixth sense” in real life, is it just a placebo or are we just really lucky figuring it out?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

From what I’m seeing, the scientific consensus as to whether or not this is a real “sixth sense” is still inconclusive, but has been leaning toward “debunked” since the early experiments by Edward B. Titchener in 1898.

As AlishaV mentioned, there has been [research](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170512-what-causes-that-feeling-of-being-watched) that suggests that we might be subconsciously more aware of our surroundings than we perceive (known as blindsight), however, we should also beware of [potential bias](https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(13)00332-1).

For people we can see, gaze detection or peripheral vision can come into play, but for those we cannot, evidence is not strong that the detection is more than chance.

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