question: How is it that people are able to sense when they’re being watched? Is the feeling of unease merely coincidence, or is there some biological component?
comment: They actually can't, people just normally look around periodically to see if they are being watched and tend to remember when they are and forget when they are not. This leads to the impression that they somehow knew it in advance (our brains are weird that way, generating false memories). If you actually do controlled tests it turns out people do not have such a special sense.
passages: Section::::Modern research.:Remote viewing.
  
  Research has suggested that in cases the participants of remote viewing experiments are influenced by subjective validation, a process through which correspondences are perceived between stimuli that are in fact associated purely randomly. Sensory cues have also occurred in remote viewing experiments.
  
  Section::::Modern research.:Telepathy.
   Similar findings have come from the United States, where Park Dietz has written: “Every instance of an attack on a public figure by a lone stranger in the United States for which adequate information has been made publicly available has been the work of a mentally disordered person who issued one or more pre-attack signals in the form of inappropriate letters, visits or statements..." The role of FTAC in the UK is to detect such signals, to evaluate the risks involved and to intervene to reduce them. Such intervention often entails the obtaining of treatment and care for the fixated individual from psychiatric and social services and general practitioners in their town of residence.
   BULLET::::- Perceived evaluative scrutiny: According to this model, dysphoric self-consciousness may increase when people feel under moderate or intensive evaluative social scrutiny such as when an asymmetric relationship is analyzed. For example, when asked about their relationships, doctoral students remembered events that they interpreted as significant to their degree of trust in their advisors when compared with their advisors. This suggests that students are more willing to pay more attention to their advisor than their advisor is motivated to pay attention to them. Also students spent more time ruminating about the behaviors, events, and their relationship in general.
   In 2012 the Danish daily newspaper and online title Dagbladet Information crowdmapped the positions of surveillance cameras by encouraging readers to use a free Android and iOS app to photograph and geolocate CCTV cameras.
  
  Section::::Personal sousveillance.
   Social psychological research has proposed a mild form of paranoid cognition, "paranoid social cognition", that has its origins in social determinants more than intra-psychic conflict. This perspective states that in milder forms, paranoid cognitions may be very common among normal individuals. For instance, it is not strange that people may exhibit in their daily life, self-centered thought such as they are being talked about, suspiciousness about other’ intentions, and assumptions of ill-will or hostility (i.e. people may feel as if everything is going against them). According to Kramer, (1998) these milder forms of paranoid cognition may be considered as an adaptive response to cope with or make sense of a disturbing and threatening social environment.
   Paranoid is a British crime drama which began broadcasting on ITV on 22 September 2016, and streaming internationally on Netflix in 2016. The eight-part series focuses on a group of UK detectives working for the fictional Woodmere police force who are attempting to solve the murder of a physician who is stabbed at a children's playground. During the course of their investigation, the detectives discover the murder has links to a German pharmaceutical company and they enlist the help of their German colleagues in Düsseldorf to find the killer. Indira Varma, Robert Glenister, and Dino Fetscher star as main protagonists DS Nina Suresh, DC Bobby Day, and DC Alec Wayfield, respectively.
   These findings suggest that human beings, who are the targets of many perceivers in everyday life, may routinely act in ways which are consistent not with their own attitudes, beliefs, or feelings; but rather with the perceptions and stereotypes which others hold of them and their attributes. This seems to suggest that the power of others' beliefs over one's behaviour is extremely strong.
  
  Section::::Mechanisms.
  
  Snyder proposed a four-step sequence in which behavioral confirmation occurs:
  
  BULLET::::1. the perceiver adopts beliefs about the target
  
  BULLET::::2. the perceiver acts as if these beliefs were true and treats the target accordingly
   BULLET::::- Perceived social distinctiveness: According to the social identity theory, people categorize themselves in terms of characteristics that made them unique or different from others under certain circumstances. Gender, ethnicity, age, or experience may become extremely relevant to explain people’s behavior when these attributes make them unique in a social group. This distinctive attribute may have influence not only in how people are perceived, but may also affect the way they perceive themselves.
   Paranoia: Being suspicious of fellow human beings is a trait to safeguard against perceived, secret plots against us, a basic human cognitive module useful for survival. But in some people, this turns into unreasonable suspiciousness where there is in reality no plotting against one. Such behaviour is by psychiatrists labeled as "paranoid schizophrenia" or in milder forms as "paranoid personality disorder". These disorders thus occur when the suspiciousness cognitive module is triggered too often and too strongly for triggers that would not trigger this module in normal people.
   The Hawthorne effect grew out of a series of studies. The theory states that an individual will act differently than they normally would due to the individual's awareness of being watched. Specifically in McGregor's X and Y theory, it states that the manager's approach has effects on the outcome of the worker. Individuals who receive attention from their superior will have positive feelings of receiving special treatment. Specifically, they feel that the attention they are receiving is unique from the attention that other employees are receiving. The basic understanding of superior-subordinate relationships lies in the foundation that the habits of a superior tend to have the power to create productive or counterproductive environments. 
   Section::::Description.:Attention bias.
  
  "People differ in how they focus their attention. What you pay attention to plays an important role in how safe or unsafe you feel. If you tend to focus your attention on negative aspects of a situation or cues that might signal danger, you will be more likely to become excessively anxious. Also, the more you look for something, the more likely it is that you will find it; so, if you are always looking for signs of danger, you will be more likely to see danger." 
  
  Section::::Description.:Interpretation bias.
   BULLET::::- Race – In a 1997 study by Chen and Bargh, it was shown that participants who were subliminally primed with an African-American stereotype observed more hostility from the target they interacted with than those who were in the control condition. This study suggests that behavioral confirmation caused targets to become more hostile when their perceiver had been negatively primed.
  
  BULLET::::- Gender – When participants were made aware of their targets' gender in a division of labour task, targets fell into their gender-specific roles through behavioral confirmation.
   In a study conducted by Fife, Nelson, and Bayles of focus groups from a Southeastern liberal arts university, five themes were ascertained regarding Facebook use and expectancy violations:
  
  BULLET::::- """Don't stalk' – and when you do, don't talk about it""
  
  BULLET::::- Though an understanding exists among Facebook participants that users will use the site to keep track of the behavior of others in a number of ways, excessive monitoring is likely to be perceived as an expectancy violation.
  
  BULLET::::- ""Don't embarrass me with bad pictures""
   BULLET::::- The first is "media tracking": audio from the user’s television may be detected by the microphone in the user’s mobile device, allowing malicious actors to gain access to what the user is watching––particularly if it is salacious. Advertisers can similarly gain insight into what a user typically watches. In both scenarios, a user’s real-world behavior is linked to their online identity and used for tracking.
   Section::::Paranoid social cognition.:Judgmental biases.
  
  Three main judgmental consequences have been identified:
  
  BULLET::::- The sinister attribution error: This bias captures the tendency that social perceivers have to overattribute lack of trustworthiness to others.
  
  BULLET::::- The overly personalistic construal of social interaction: Refers to the inclination that paranoid perceiver has to interpret others’ action in a disproportional self-referential way, increasing the belief that they are the target of others’ thoughts and actions. A special kind of bias in the biased punctuation of social interaction, which entail an overperception of causal linking among independent events.
   It is believed that humans evolved agent detection as a survival strategy. In situations where one is unsure of the presence of an intelligent agent (such as an enemy or a predator), there is survival value in assuming its presence so that precautions can be taken. For example, if a human came across an indentation in the ground that might be a lion's footprint, it is advantageous to err on the side of caution and assume that the lion is present.
  
  Psychologists Kurt Gray and Daniel Wegner wrote: 
  
  Section::::Time-consuming steps, fast escapes and criticism.
   BULLET::::- Non-bizarre delusions are common among those with personality disorders and are understood by people within the same culture. For example, if Lindsey thinks that the FBI is following her in unmarked cars and watching her via security cameras she is having a non-bizarre delusion. While this is highly unlikely for the average person, it is possible and therefore understood by those around her.
   In one study, Tajfel subjects were asked to watch a coin toss. They were then designated to a particular group based on whether the coin landed on heads or tails. The subjects placed in groups based on such meaningless associations between them have consistently been found to "act as if those sharing the meaningless labels were kin or close friends."
  
  Researchers since Tajfel have made strides into unraveling the mystery behind this phenomenon. Today it is broken down into two basic psychological processes, one cognitive and one motivational. 
   The research also suggests that social inhibitions can be divided between different kinds of social fears, or different patterns of inhibition can be seen in individuals. The researchers suggest that certain patterns, or certain social fears, can be better predictors of social phobia than others. Mainly, the researchers suggest that there can be different patterns of social inhibition in relation to an unfamiliar object or encounter. These specific patterns should be looked at in conjunction with motivation and the psychophysiological reaction to the object or encounter to determine the specific patterns that are the better predictors of social phobia.
   Watching-Eye Effect
  
  The Watching-Eye Effect is related to the Hawthorne effect which describes that there is an observable change in behavior when people are being watched. It has been demonstrated that these effects are so pronounced that even depictions of eyes are enough to trigger them, in which case they are referred to as Watching-Eye Effect. Empirical psychological research has continually shown that the visible presence of images depicting eyes nudges people towards slightly, but measurably more honest and more pro-social behavior.
   Potential solutions to the issue of passive human by-catch include image-altering technology to automatically pixelate identifying portions of images, such as a person's face or license plate number. These issues are separate from a more overt use of drones for the purpose of surveillance. There is a concept of behavioral privacy; the idea that a person's behavior differs if they know they are being watched, or not. If one lives in an area where drone's are being used for surveillance, their behavioral privacy is compromised, as they do not feel that they have the freedom to act naturally.
  
  Section::::Acoustic recording.
   BULLET::::- "Freedom Wars" is a PSVita action role-playing game which set in the dystopian future. Most of the human population were sentenced 1,000,000 years of imprisonment since they were born. They were dwelling inside the enclosed metropolitan cities named "Panopticon". The society were under heavy surveillance by numbers of "Accessory" androids. And the criminals were forced to hard labors of finding resources in the outside world, and then contribute to their government to exchange for few years amnesty or gain access to several human rights. In the game, the slogan "We gaze at you" is the parody of "Big Brother is watching you" in "Nineteen Eighty-Four".
   BULLET::::- Uncertainty about social standing: The knowledge about the social standing is another factor that may induce paranoid social cognition. Many researchers have argued that experiencing uncertainty about a social position in a social system constitutes an adverse psychological state, one which people are highly motivated to reduce.
  
  Section::::Paranoid social cognition.:Dysphoric self-consciousness.
  
  Refers to an aversive form of heightened 'public self-consciousness' characterized by the feelings that one is under intensive evaluation or scrutiny. Becoming self-tormenting will increase the odds of interpreting others' behaviors in a self-referential way.
  
  Section::::Paranoid social cognition.:Hypervigilance and rumination.
   Additionally, a former CIA employee and FBI firearms instructor observed it in training. "Consistently, in every class, officers would shoot at their target upon hearing others shoot, even when their particular target board did not contain the called target." He suggests that one reason it occurs is because of muscle memory: "[T]he targets turn or the whistle blows, and all the officers shoot together until a cease fire signal is given."
   Participatory surveillance is community-based monitoring of other individuals. This term can be applied to both digital media studies and ecological field studies. In the realm of media studies, it refers to how users surveil each other using the internet. Either through the use of social media, search engines, and other web-based methods of tracking, an individual has the power to find information both freely or non freely given by the individual being searched. Issues of privacy emerge within this sphere of participatory surveillance, predominantly focused on how much information is available on the web that an individual does not consent to. More so, disease outbreak researchers can study social-media based patterns to decrease the time it takes to detect an outbreak, an emerging field of study called infodemiology. Within the realm of ecological fieldwork, participatory surveillance is used as an overarching term for the method in which indigenous and rural communities are used to gain greater accessibility to causes of disease outbreak. By using these communities, disease outbreak can be spotted earlier then through traditional means or healthcare institutions.
  
presuppositions: People can sense that they are being watched. People are able to sense when they're being watched.
corrections: People can't actually sense this. People aren't able to sense when they're being watched but have the impression they can.
raw_presuppositions: People can sense that they are being watched. People are able to sense when they're being watched.
raw_corrections: People can't actually sense this. People aren't able to sense when they're being watched but have the impression they can.