Why can you “feel” when someone is looking at you

Question

As title

In: Biology

Answer 1

You can’t tell if someone is looking at you specifically.

However, we are often aware of more things than we realize. Your brain may be noticing movement out of the corner of your eyes (or movement stopping if someone starts staring). You may also have heard certain sounds which indicate a person there.

But also… confirmation bias is happening. We feel people are watching more often than they are. But all the times we feel that someone is watching, look around, and realize nobody is there, our brain decides that isn’t worth remembering. The few times that we think someone might be watching, look around, and are right, our brain files that memory away with post-it-note attached to make it easier to find.

So when future us digs in our memory we immediately find these few times we happened to be correct and forgets all the times we weren’t, giving us the false impression that we are actually good at knowing when someone is watching us.