Title: The Psychology of Feeling Like You’re Being Watched -- Science of Us
Headings: The Psychological Explanation for When You Feel Like You’re Being Watched
The Psychological Explanation for When You Feel Like You’re Being Watched
Because your eyes pick up on more than you know.
Because you can think your way into feeling.
Because gaze is extremely important.
Because you often wrongly assume that you’re being looked at …
… but that can actually be a good thing.
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Content: Though TN could not explain or articulate what he was seeing, activity in his amygdala— the part of the brain that responds to threat and arousal — spiked when he was shown pictures with faces that seemed to be staring at him. What TN’s study shows us may explain some of the “sixth sense” feeling we have about being watched: Our brains are doing a lot of work under the surface of our conscious gaze. So if you’re walking down the street and you get that feeling, chances are, you may have picked up on other cues outside your direct field of vision. Because you can think your way into feeling. That tingling sensation? It might feel like something real, but it’s likely only the product of your own fixation. One of the first people to study the feeling of being watched was Dr. Edward Titchener, a psychologist working at the turn of the 20th century. He wrote an entire article about the tingling sensation, called “The Feeling of Being Stared At.” In it, he dismissed the idea that gaze itself could have that sort of an impact on the skin: “