Each of us had this strange feeling. You stand in a crowd and do not look people in the eye, but you are sure that someone is watching you. How can this phenomenon be explained without resorting to pseudoscientific explanations like extrasensory perception, which is more simply called the "sixth sense"?
Eyes are the mirror of the soul
This phenomenon is based on our initial focus on the eyes of others. It is through them that we try to read the thoughts of other people, look into their souls and assess the situation. The human brain is tuned in to fix the gaze of strangers. Scientists have put forward the assumptions about the existence of an extensive neural network, which conducts its work on processing information obtained from interacting with the eyes of other people. To confirm the theory, an experiment was performed on macaques. When the test monkey was under the direct gaze of its relative, the identified group of neurons began their active work.
A person has an innate tendency to feel a gaze on himself
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If someone watches you, a special mechanism is immediately activated in the brain that shifts your attention towards the object. This mechanism may be innate. So, babies see only nearby objects (approximately 25 centimeters away). This condition allows them to make direct eye contact with the mother's eyes.
The eyes can reveal the direction of the gaze
As we have found out, the human brain is designed to catch the gaze of other people. But the eyes themselves have a rather complex structure. The structure of the human visual organ differs markedly from its structure in other living beings. The sclera surrounding the pupil is large and completely white. Thus, nature has awarded us the ability to distinguish the direction of someone's gaze. In many animals, unlike humans, the pupil itself takes up more space, and the sclera is darker. This gives predators the opportunity to camouflage themselves in open space, waiting for prey. The potential victim will not be able to turn on the sixth sense.
Why are the views of outsiders so important that they need specialized treatment? This is mainly needed to search for a significant event. If the other person's attention shifts towards you, there could be a potential danger. You almost reflexively follow the gaze of the stranger, thereby increasing your own vigilance. Evolution has developed an increased focus on the gaze of strangers to maintain social interaction in groups. According to some scholars, it is this trait that has formed the basis for many of our more complex communication skills.
Range of mental conditions
Disturbances in gaze processing can occur in a wide range of conditions. For example, people with autistic diseases are less likely to focus on the gaze of strangers. They also experience certain problems with reading information from other people's eyes. People with autism do not recognize well the emotions and intentions of others and may therefore be more vulnerable in critical situations. Any mental illness associated with immersion in one's own world reduces the patient's ability to focus on himself.
However, at the other extreme are people who are fixated on the attention of others to their own person. This hypertrophied feeling gives out wishful thinking and draws in the patient's imagination something that does not exist in reality. Socially preoccupied people exhibit increased levels of anxiety, as well as a panic response when they are actually under the gaze of a stranger.
Psychological advice
Eye contact is a simple psychological reaction to other people. A direct open look towards a stranger gives a person certain advantages in communication, a chance for social domination. Eye-to-eye gaze enables others to present you as a reliable and attractive person. That is why psychologists advise not to avert your eyes to the side during an important conversation and not to lower your gaze to the floor at the moment when you pass through a crowd of people. By the way, this feature is also observed in animals.
In one of the scientific studies conducted at a dog shelter, scientists found out that dogs resort to some tricks when communicating with people. They look at the potential owner and open their eyes as much as possible for a few seconds. The man immediately falls under the spell of the dog and takes the poor fellow to his family. Animals that do not resort to these manipulations, as a rule, remain in the shelter until better times.
Gazing helps you to unconsciously regulate the situation when talking to a group of people. As a rule, we keep eye contact with only one interlocutor, and if it is necessary to switch the dialogue, we pass the "baton" to another. It would never occur to you to break the chain and look at the moment of transferring the word to someone else. Otherwise, there will be an awkward pause in the room.
How to detect a gaze without turning your head in response?
Since the human eye is optimized for easy detection, you can easily recognize someone's attention with your peripheral vision. If you are sitting in a train carriage and a stranger across the street glares at you, you can easily feel it without looking at him. It is curious that the central gaze fixation point can be deflected no more than 4 degrees. But, as it turns out, that's enough. And you can, without changing the direction of your head, understand that someone is looking at you. Attention can be detected by other signals from the stranger's body. For example, if his eyes are wearing sunglasses, his attention to us is betrayed by the tilt of his head or the position of the body. However, according to psychologists, people often exaggerate their attention to their own person. In fact, they don't look at you as often as you think. Likely,heightened suspicion has developed as another defense mechanism against a potential threat.
Who is looking after you?
Every person has moments when it seemed to him that someone standing behind was gazing at his back. Or maybe this is the very "sixth sense"? Scientists have been researching this issue for more than a century and seem to have come to a consensus. The most common idea was formulated back in 1898. Many people, suspecting something was wrong, rush to turn back in order to confirm or deny their guesses. And then an amazing phenomenon occurs: the two views do meet.
Most likely, this is just a response. After all, if you are watching for a potential threat, your opponent may be concerned about the same. And now, in a matter of a fraction of a second, your views are aligned. Only for some reason it seems to you that he has been watching you for a long time. It is worth noting that most studies of this kind can be subjective, and their results are influenced by human biases.
Inga Kaisina