Have you ever had the experience when, stopped in gridlock
traffic, you look over at the person in the car next to you and they immediately
meet your eyes, even though they were staring straight ahead and you were out
of their peripheral vision?
There’s a name for this: It's called scopaesthesia, or gaze
detection, where people can feel eyes on them, even from behind. It’s been a
buzzy phenomenon in parapsychology because some think it’s a sixth sense, like telepathy,
yet no study has actually proven it exists.
In 1898, psychologist Edward B. Tichner reported that some of his
students could feel being stared at from behind and also felt a “tingling”
sensation on the backs of their necks. He thought that it wasn’t telepathy, but
more so that a second person in your line of vision reacts to the staring, which
makes you react as well. He tested his theory and had negative results.
Since the 1900s, various other experiments have tried to
prove gaze detection is real, but the test results were either neutral
or lacked proper scientific method. No one has yet been able to determine why
or how this happens, but it does happen -- everyone has experienced this in
their lifetimes. We just don’t know why.
We do know that brain cells light up when you sense being stared at, but the reasons how are more complicated than we can understand now.
Do people really have ESP, or do we have eyes in the backs of
our heads? It’s in our best interests to sense predators. Unlike prey animals
like deer and rabbits, who have monocular vision (their eyes are on the sides of
their heads, and they see images separately), humans have binocular vision and
eyes facing front, which is better for hunting, but bad when being hunted.
Maybe during the caveman days we developed the ability to see if something wicked
was coming up behind us?
Enjoy this special human gift, especially when you’re out
and you feel eyes boring into your neck. Then you can turn around quick and freak
the starer out, because staring is rude, don’t you know?