How do you feel like your being watched (without seeing the one who’s watching)? Does our brain simply detect it or is it something else entirely?

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How do you feel like your being watched (without seeing the one who’s watching)? Does our brain simply detect it or is it something else entirely?

In: Biology

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Well, you *can* ‘feel’ like you’re being watched without seeing the person watching you. For example, if somebody’s standing behind you screaming “I’M LOOKING RIGHT AT YOU”. You would feel like somebody was watching you without seeing them.

Which is basically what your brain does when you get that feeling. It notices clues in your surroundings and draws the conclusion that you’re being watched, or at least that you might be and should investigate if you are.

That could be some guy standing behind you shouting at you that he’s watching you. Or it could be something a little more subtle, like an unexplained creak in the floorboards or a shadow moving at the corner of your eye. What was that? If it can’t come up with an answer, it might speculate there’s somebody in the house who might be watching you. It then gives you a sense of discomfort to get you to stop whatever it is you’re doing to go investigate. But then it turns out the floorboards creaked because the sun’s going down and everything’s getting cooler so the wood in your house contracts, generating the occasional creak. And the ‘shadow’ was just your ‘background noise’ TV show getting reflected in the corner of your new glasses in an unexpected way. There wasn’t actually anybody watching you. Or was there?

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