REACTIONS TO AN UNSEEN GAZE (REMOTE ATTENTION) - A REVIEW, WITH NEW DATA ON AUTONOMIC STARING DETECTION

Have you ever had the feeling that someone was staring at you from beh ind and, upon turning around, found you were correct? Some of these ex periences may be merely coincidental or attributable to subtle cues. H owever, laboratory studies have demonstrated that some instances of ac curate detection of remote staring cannot be attributed to such conven tional factors. Rather, they suggest that at least some experiences of remote staring detection may contain valid psychic or parapsychologic al components. We review earlier studies in which persons could guess successfully when they were being stared at by persons beyond the rang e of possible sensory cues (that is, the trials were carried out via o ne-way mirrors or closed-circuit television and according to an unknow n, random schedule). We then report original, well-controlled research in which unconscious, autonomic reactions (electrodermal activities) were used to provide physiological, rather than conscious and verbal, indications of accurate remote staring detection. A closed-circuit vid eo system was used in a randomized, blinded experimental design in ord er to eliminate the possibility of sensory cuing. Accurate and signifi cant effects were obtained, with moderately large effect sizes t (15) = 2.66; p = .018, two-tailed; effect size = 0.59]. The unconscious, ph ysiological (autonomic nervous system) measure used in the present wor k appears to yield stronger effects than did previous, more conscious, cognitive guessing measures. Additionally, qualitatively different re action patterns occurred for untrained starees versus starees who had experienced extensive training in becoming more sensitive to others an d dealing with their own psychological resistance to being ''connected ' with other people [t (15) = 2.15, p = .048, two-tailed; effect size = 0.50].