The Sense of Being Stared At, Part 1: Is It Real or Illusory?
📄 Original study ↗📌 Appears in:
Plain English Summary
Ever get that creepy feeling someone is watching you? Sheldrake gathered a mountain of data to test whether it's real. Across 58 studies and over 30,000 trials, people correctly detected unseen stares 54.7% of the time — versus the 50% expected by chance. That gap sounds tiny, but statistically it's staggering (odds of a fluke: roughly one in a hundred billion billion). At an Amsterdam science museum, nearly 19,000 people scored well above chance too. Even with blindfolds, one-way mirrors, and closed-circuit TV ruling out ordinary cues, the effect held up. The juicy twist: skeptical researchers got positive results at first — the effect only vanished when the skeptics themselves acted as starers, suggesting who does the looking matters. This is the definitive evidence review for the phenomenon.
Research Notes
The definitive evidential review of staring detection research by its most prolific investigator. Companion to Part 2 (sheldrake_2005_stared_part2) in the same JCS issue. Essential starting point for any assessment of the SOBA phenomenon: breadth of replication (58 studies, 30,803+ trials), systematic artifact analysis, and frank engagement with Baker, Marks, Blackmore, and Wiseman critiques make this the primary positive-evidence anchor for staring detection in the library.
Reviews evidence for the sense of being stared at (SOBA) across five historical and dozens of modern experiments. Direct-looking experiments (30,803 trials; 21 original studies plus 37 independent replications) yield 54.7% correct vs. 50% chance (sign test: 853 positive vs. 466 negative subjects; p=1x10-20). The NeMo Science Centre tested 18,793 subjects (32-41% vs. 20% chance threshold). A meta-analysis of 15 CCTV-based DMILS studies confirmed significant autonomic (GSR) responses to remote staring. Artifact controls (blindfolds, one-way mirrors, CCTV, automatic recording) failed to eliminate the effect. Skeptic investigators all obtained initial positive results; null results emerged when experimenters themselves served as lookers, suggesting an experimenter effect. The paper concludes most evidence supports SOBAs reality and outlines six directions for further research.
Related Papers
Companion Paper
Meta Analyses Of Same Paradigm
Skeptic Proponent Collaboration
Same Research Program
- A Dog That Seems to Know When His Owner Is Coming Home: Videotaped Experiments and Observations — Sheldrake, Rupert (2000)
- Videotaped Experiments on Telephone Telepathy — Sheldrake, Rupert (2003)
- Testing a Language-Using Parrot for Telepathy — Sheldrake, Rupert (2003)
- Testing for Telepathy in Connection with E-mails — Sheldrake, Rupert (2005)
Companion
- Of Two Minds: Sceptic-Proponent Collaboration within Parapsychology — Schlitz, Marilyn J (2006)
- Experimenter Effects and the Remote Detection of Staring — Wiseman, Richard (1997)
- Distant intentionality and the feeling of being stared at: Two meta-analyses — Schmidt, Stefan (2004)
- The Sense of Being Stared At: A Preliminary Meta-Analysis — Radin, Dean I (2005)
- Fundamentally Misunderstanding Visual Perception: Adults’ Belief in Visual Emissions — Winer, Gerald A (2002)
Also by these authors
More in Telepathy
Telecommunication Telepathy: A Meta-Analysis
Rethinking Communication and Consciousness: Lessons from The Telepathy Tapes Podcast
Who's Calling? Evaluating the Accuracy of Guessing Who Is on the Phone
A Comparison of Four New Automated Telephone Telepathy Tests
Detecting Telepathy: A Meta-Analysis for Extrasensory Perception Experiments in Last 20 Years
📋 Cite this paper
Sheldrake, Rupert (2005). The Sense of Being Stared At, Part 1: Is It Real or Illusory?. Journal of Consciousness Studies.
@article{sheldrake_2005_stared_part1,
title = {The Sense of Being Stared At, Part 1: Is It Real or Illusory?},
author = {Sheldrake, Rupert},
year = {2005},
journal = {Journal of Consciousness Studies},
}