The psychic staring effect, also known as scopaesthesia, is the claimed ability to sense when someone is looking at you without seeing them. This idea was first studied by psychologist Edward B. Titchener in 1898 after his students said they could "feel" when someone was watching them, even though they could not see the person. Titchener conducted several experiments in a laboratory but found no evidence to support the claim. Since the 1980s, researchers, including parapsychologists like Rupert Sheldrake, have continued to study this phenomenon.

Many people report this feeling. A 1913 study found that more than two-thirds of students questioned said they could sense when someone was staring at them.

Origin

In 1898, psychologist Edward B. Titchener wrote about students in his junior classes who said they could feel when someone was looking at them from behind. A smaller number of students believed that staring at the back of a person’s neck could make that person turn around. These events happened in places like classrooms and public halls. The students described the feeling as an uncomfortable tingling that grew stronger until they felt they had to move to stop it.

Titchener did not agree with the idea that thoughts can be read without speaking. Instead, he explained that when someone felt they were being watched and turned their head to look, another person who was already watching them might notice the movement. From the person’s perspective, they turned their head and saw someone looking directly at them, which made them think the person had been watching them all along. Titchener believed the tingling feeling happened because the person focused attention on their own neck and thought someone might be looking at it. He noted that paying close attention to a body part, like a knee or foot, can make that part feel more sensitive. Titchener tested people who claimed they could sense others’ stares or make people turn around. In both cases, his experiments showed that the results were always negative.

Later studies

In 1913, John E. Coover conducted a study where ten participants were asked if they could tell when an experimenter was looking at them during 100 separate trials. Participants answered correctly 50.2% of the time, a result Coover described as very close to what would be expected by chance alone. He concluded that while many people believe they can sense being watched, experiments showed this ability was not real. Coover suggested that the "tingling" feeling described by Titchener might be an example of automatic body responses.

In 1983, an experiment used closed-circuit television cameras to observe participants, reporting a 74% success rate. However, later research pointed out that the randomness of the trial sequences was not properly controlled. A 2009 study used closed-circuit cameras and skin conductance monitoring to measure participants’ reactions. To reduce bias, participants were asked to play attention-demanding computer games when not staring. Participants were instructed to signal whenever they felt watched. This study did not find clear evidence of the effect.

In the 2000s, parapsychologist Rupert Sheldrake performed several experiments on the topic. He reported that participants showed a weak sense of being watched, but not a sense of not being watched. In the Journal of Consciousness Studies, Sheldrake noted a 53.1% success rate, with two participants scoring much higher than chance. Critics argued that Sheldrake’s experiments used patterns that were not fully random, which might have made it easier for participants to guess the sequences. In 2005, Michael Shermer raised concerns about confirmation bias and experimenter bias, stating that Sheldrake’s claims could not be proven false.

After a 2004 skin conductance test showed no positive results, Lobach & Bierman concluded that the "staring paradigm" is not as easy to reproduce as some claim.

Gaze detection

Many studies have looked at how well humans can see where other people are looking. Scientists believe that being able to tell where someone is looking helped humans survive better by helping them notice dangers and communicate without words. Human eyes have a clearly visible and distinct white part (called the sclera) and colored part (called the iris), which are different from the eyes of other animals. These features may have developed because humans needed to use complex communication to survive and have babies.

This ability to notice where someone is looking happens without realizing it and uses information from the edges of our vision. This might explain why people sometimes feel like they have a "sixth sense" when someone is looking at them.