question: Why can you sense people staring at you?
comment: Our eyes have pretty wide visual field, much bigger than we can think. In the process of evolution it became really important to detect if anyone staring at you, so now we can have the feeling of someone's stare even if their eyes are on the edge of the visual field.
passages: A study conducted by the University of Sydney's Vision Centre concluded that when test subjects are presented with limited cues to determine whether or not they are being stared at, they tend to assume that they are, despite having too little information to make that determination. Test subjects asked to determine if an individual wearing dark sunglasses is looking at them, for example, would assume they are indeed being stared at, even though the starer's eyes were obscured and the actual position of their eyes was not known to the subject. Humans, they reason, are "hard-wired" to err on the side of caution since the consequences of "not" recognizing such a potential threat or important social cue would be more detrimental than a false positive error.
   Writing after another skin conductance test in 2004 showed a negative result, Lobach & Bierman concluded that "the staring paradigm is not the easily replicable paradigm that it is claimed to be".
  
  Section::::Gaze detection.
   Section::::Later studies.
  
  A 1913 study by John E. Coover asked ten subjects to state whether or not they could sense an experimenter looking at them, over a period of 100 possible staring periods. The subjects' answers were correct 50.2% of the time, a result that Coover called an "astonishing approximation" of pure chance. Coover concluded that although the feeling of being stared at was common, experimentation showed it to be "groundless". He suggested that the "tingling" sensation described by Titchener was an example of motor automatism.
   The feeling is a common one, being reported by over two thirds of the students questioned in a 1913 study.
  
  Section::::Origin.
   Various studies have explored the reliability with which humans can visually detect gazes from other individuals. Brain imaging has shown that the brain cells which are activated when a test subject can see that they are being stared at are distinct from the cells activated when the starer's eyes are averted away from the subject by just a few degrees . It is theorized that the ability to precisely detect the target of a starer's gaze has conferred an evolutionary advantage by improving threat detection capabilities, as well as facilitating nonverbal communication. Compared to the eyes of other animals, the uniquely visible and well-defined sclera and iris of human eyes provides further evidence of its evolutionary importance for the species, and are thought to have developed as humans became more reliant upon complex communication for survival and reproductive success.
   In "The Birth of the Clinic" (1963), Michel Foucault first applied the "medical gaze" to conceptually describe and explain the act of looking, as part of the process of medical diagnosis; the unequal power dynamics between doctors and patients; and the cultural hegemony of intellectual authority that a society grants to medical knowledge and medicine men. In "" (1975), Foucault develops the gaze as an apparatus of power based upon the social dynamics of power relations, and the social dynamics of disciplinary mechanisms, such as surveillance and personal self-regulation, as practices in a prison and in a school.
   Section::::The gaze in systems of power.
   A 1983 experiment using closed-circuit television cameras to watch the subjects reported a 74% success rate, although later research suggested that the randomness of the sequences had not been controlled for. An attempt to recreate this study in 2009 used closed-circuit cameras and skin conductance monitoring to detect a reaction from the subjects, and required starers to play attention-demanding computer games when not staring at the subjects, in order to suppress any effects of thinking about the starer while not looking at them. Subjects were required to indicate whenever they felt that they were being watched. The experiment "failed to demonstrate a clear cut effect".
   Section::::Social factors.
  
  Children have to be socialised into learning acceptable staring behaviour. This is often difficult because children have different sensitivities to self-esteem. Staring is also sometimes used as a technique of flirting with an object of affection. However, being stared at, especially for a prolonged amount of time or very frequently by one person in particular, can cause discomfort to those subjected to it. 
  
  Jean-Paul Sartre discusses "The look" in Being and Nothingness, in which the appearance of someone else creates a situation in which a person's subjectivity is transformed without their consent.
  
  Section::::Psychological study.
   Psychic staring effect
  
  The psychic staring effect (sometimes called scopaesthesia) is a supposed phenomenon in which humans detect being stared at by extrasensory means. The idea was first explored by psychologist Edward B. Titchener in 1898 after students in his junior classes reported being able to "feel" when somebody was looking at them, even though they could not see this person. Titchener performed a series of laboratory experiments that found only negative results. The effect has been the subject of contemporary attention from parapsychologists and fringe researchers from the 1980s onwards, most notably Rupert Sheldrake.
   Psychologist Edward B. Titchener reported in 1898 that some students in his junior classes believed that they could "feel" when they were being stared at from behind, and a smaller proportion believed that by staring at the back of a person's neck they could force them to turn around. Both phenomena were said to occur in public places such as classrooms and public halls. His students described the feeling as "a state of unpleasant tingling, which gathers in volume and intensity until a movement which shall relieve it becomes inevitable".
   Section::::The oppositional gaze.:Postcolonial gaze.:The male tourist gaze.
   Being able to view inmates from the tower is seen almost as ‘God like’. The observer can watch over the cells without the inmates being able to see him in return. “If I can observe the watcher who spies upon me, I can control my surveillance, I can spy in turn, I can learn the watcher’s ways, his weaknesses, I can study his habits, I can elude him. If the eye is hidden, it looks at me even when it is not actually observing me. By concealing itself in the shadows, the eye can intensify all its powers.” 
   BULLET::::- Gazing - Staring at someone means that a person shows sincere interest. Staring at a person's lips can indicate that someone wants to kiss another person. In general, staring means, "I want that."
  
  BULLET::::- Glancing - Glancing can show a person's true desires. For instance, glancing at a door might mean that someone wants to leave. Glancing at a glass of water might mean that a person is thirsty.
   In "Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture" (2009), Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright said that "the gaze is [conceptually] integral to systems of power, and [to] ideas about knowledge"; that to practice the gaze is to enter a personal relationship with the person being looked at. Foucault's concepts of panopticism, of the power/knowledge binary, and of biopower address the modes of personal self-regulation that a person practices when under surveillance; the modification of personal behaviour by way of institutional surveillance.
  
  Section::::The male gaze.
   Formerly called bio-PK, "direct mental interactions with living systems" (DMILS) studies the effects of one person's intentions on a distant person's psychophysiological state. One type of DMILS experiment looks at the commonly reported "feeling of being stared at." The "starer" and the "staree" are isolated in different locations, and the starer is periodically asked to simply gaze at the staree via closed circuit video links. Meanwhile, the staree's nervous system activity is automatically and continuously monitored.
   Section::::History.:"Soul Contract" and "Zebra Session" (2014–2017).
   To some extent, the meaning of a person’s staring behaviour depends upon the attributions made by the observer. Staring often occurs accidentally, when someone appears to be staring into space they may well be lost in thought, or stupefied, or simply unable to see.
  
  Staring conceptually also implies confronting the inevitable – ‘staring death in the face’, or ‘staring into the abyss’. Group staring evokes and emphasises paranoia; such as the archetypal stranger walking into a saloon in a Western to be greeted by the stares of all the regulars. The fear of being stared at is called Scopophobia.
   Section::::History.:"Octopon" and "Bad Machine" (2012–14).
   Section::::Body motion.:Detection errors.
   Stare-in-the-crowd effect
  
  The stare-in-the-crowd effect is the notion that an eyes-forward, direct gaze is more easily detected than an averted gaze. First discovered by psychologist and neurophysiologist Michael von Grünau (October 3, 1944 – December 22, 2011) and his psychology student Christina Marie Anston using human subjects (von Grünau and Anston 1995), the processing advantage associated with this effect is thought to derive from the importance of eye contact as a cue for social interactions.
   The looking-glass self comprises three main components that are unique to humans (Shaffer 2005).
  
  BULLET::::1. We imagine how we must appear to others in a social situation.
  
  BULLET::::2. We imagine and react to what we feel their judgment of that appearance must be.
  
  BULLET::::3. We develop our sense of self and respond through this perceived judgments of others.
   "“I was in bed and about to fall asleep when I had the distinct impression that “I” was at the ceiling level looking down at my body in the bed. I was very startled and frightened; immediately [afterward] I felt that, I was consciously back in the bed again.”"
   In critical theory, sociology, and psychoanalysis, the philosophic term the gaze (French "le regard") describes the act of seeing and the act of being seen. The concept and the social applications of the gaze have been defined and explained by existentialist and phenomenologist philosophers; Jean-Paul Sartre, in "Being and Nothingness" (1943); Michel Foucault in "" (1975) developed the concept of the gaze to illustrate the dynamics of socio-political power relations and the social dynamics of society's mechanisms of discipline; and Jacques Derrida, in "The Animal that Therefore I Am (More to Come)" (1997) elaborated upon the inter-species relations that exist among animals and human beings, which are established by way of the gaze.
   Section::::In psychoanalysis.
  