Title: Why You Feel Like You're Being Watched | Reader's Digest
Headings: Here’s the Psychological Reason You Sometimes Feel Like You’re Being Watched
Here’s the Psychological Reason You Sometimes Feel Like You’re Being Watched
“In a sense, we are absolutely the ghosts we are sensing.”
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Brittany Gibson

Content: How many times have you looked up only to make awkward eye contact with someone who was already looking at you? In the case that someone is actually looking at you, it’s because your eyes are always picking up on things that are outside your direct field of vision—even when you don’t realize it. Despite the awkward eye contact you may encounter, this is actually a survival technique. “Direct gaze can signal dominance or a threat, and if you perceive something as a threat, you would not want to miss it. So assuming that the other person is looking at you may simply be a safer strategy,” said professor Colin Clifford of the Vision Centre and the University of Sydney in a media release. “ Direct gaze is often a social cue that the other person wants to communicate with us, so it’s a signal for an upcoming interaction.” ( In some cultures, people carry around talismans, which are believed to be for protection against those who glare at you with an “evil eye” when you’re not looking, which supposedly results in bad luck, misfortunate, or injury—here are some good luck charms from around the world to try .) So what about when you’re home alone and feel an “evil eye” gazing at you from across the room? In psychological terms, the feeling of an unknown presence is, “an illusory own-body perception with well-defined characteristics that is associated with sensorimotor loss and caused by lesions in three distinct brain regions: temporoparietal, insular, and especially frontoparietal cortex,” according to a study published by ScienceDirect.