What I Think About: Gaze Perception

Our ability to detect when someone is looking at us is strong enough to make strong that it seems like a sixth sense. 

I think this scenario proves to be relatable to almost everyone: You're in a public area (a classroom, a large building, a public street, etc.), and you're minding your business. You might be actively doing something, like using your phone, or you may be doing nothing at all. At some point, you begin to feel a tingle on the back of your neck, and you stop what you're doing. You get the idea that someone is looking at you, and you begin to look around to find your secret observer. You search for a few seconds without finding any clues, but at the last second, you spot somebody quickly turning their head away, trying to avoid eye contact. From these limited symbols, you have come to the definite conclusion that this was the person staring at you. 

Or maybe this is more accessible: You're in a public space, working, reading, or performing a task. You get this tingling sensation again, and you look around and find someone who seems to be looking in your direction. With closer inspection, however, you find that they're actually looking directly above you, and so you decide that they did not mean to attract your attention. But before you turn your head away, they suddenly begin to smile, and then they wave. You're still unsure about whether they're looking at you or not, but you don't want to be rude, so you smile and wave back. Unfortunately, someone else walks in front of you and greets this person, and you realize that you not only look stupid, but have also misunderstood this person's signals. 

These types of events happen so often that it seems as if we have a sixth sense that's devoted to detecting when others are staring at us. We sense that some is looking at us even when they're outside of our visible perception, and we often end up being correct, leading some of us to believe that we have superpowers or psychic abilities. It's almost as if we have a second eye that's controlled by our mind. There's are term for this ability, called ESP or extrasensory perception, which was developed in 1930 by Joseph Banks Rhine. He conducted several experiments in an attempt to prove the existence of psychic abilities such as precognition (the ability to see events in the future), psychokinesis (the ability to move or influence physical objects using the mind), and clairvoyance, which is what I've been discussing. While the concept was intriguing, skeptics concluded that the evidence supporting it was unconvincing. 

Scientists have effectively debunked this theory, and it's hard to find an article that supports the idea that ESP is used instead of natural biological functions of the brain. This article from Psychology Daily is frequently cited by authors answering the question, "How do we know when someone is looking at us?". In the article, Ilan Shrira and points out that this ability is attributed to a special "gaze detection" system in our brains. Specific brain cells fire when someone's eyes are pointed in a certain direction, allowing us to recognize subtle signals in space and determine where people are looking. The fact that we have dark pupils and white sclera makes it fairly easy for these brain cells to detect where we are looking, a characteristic not shared by other animals whose eyes don't have such a sharp contrast in color. 

Although this sounds logical, there's still some room for ESP to exist within the framework. Shrira's explanation only applies when our observer is within our peripheral vision system - what about when our observer is behind us? How is it that we can feel this, even when we can't see it? A scientist would likely argue that this would only happen if we had recently seen this person, and that if we did feel as if someone was watching us from behind, we were probably misconstruing signals coming from other people in our peripheral vision. Regardless, our gaze perception, whether it's due to clairvoyance or extremely powerful peripheral vision, really is extraordinary.