MNN.com
LAURA MOSS
November 19, 2015, 5:18 p.m.
If you’ve ever felt like someone was watching you, you may have attributed that awareness to a sense of unease or a prickling on the back of your neck. But there’s nothing psychic about it; your brain was simply picking up on cues. In fact, your brain is wired to inform you that someone is looking at you — even when they’re not.
“Far from being ESP, the perception originates from a system in the brain that's devoted to detecting where others are looking,†writes social psychologist Ilan Shrira. This concept may sound confusing, but it actually makes a lot of sense when you think about it as a survival instinct.
Many mammals can tell when another animal is looking at them, but the human “gaze-detection system†is particularly good at doing this from a distance. We’re able to easily discern where someone is looking.
This system is especially sensitive when someone is looking at you directly, and studies have found that particular cells fire when this happens.
“Gaze perception — the ability to tell what someone is looking at — is a social cue people often take for granted,†Colin Clifford, a psychologist at the University of Sydney's Vision Center, told the Daily Mail. “Judging whether others are looking at us may come naturally, but it's actually not that simple as our brains have to do a lot of work behind the scenes.â€
When you catch someone looking at you, what is it that clued you in? Often, it’s as simple as the position of the person's head or body.
If both the head and body are turned toward you, it’s clear where the person's attention is focused. It’s even more obvious when the person's body is pointed away from you but their head is facing you. When this happens, you immediately look to the person’s eyes to see where they're looking.
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