Experimenter Effects and the Remote Detection of Staring
📄 Original study📌 Appears in:
Plain English Summary
Can you feel someone staring at you from another room? A skeptic (Wiseman) and a believer (Schlitz) tested this together — same lab, same equipment, same procedures, same volunteers. They measured skin conductivity (basically how much your palms sweat) while a sender stared at participants through closed-circuit TV or looked away. The results were wild: Schlitz's participants showed a real physical response to being stared at. Wiseman's showed nothing. Same everything, different outcomes depending on who ran it. This is one of the most cited demonstrations of "experimenter effects" — where whoever runs a study somehow influences results. It remains unsolved and raises deep questions about what replication means in science.
Research Notes
One of the most cited studies in the experimenter-effect debate. The finding that protocol-identical experiments yield different results depending on who runs them remains unresolved and challenges conventional replication frameworks. Led directly to the Wiseman & Schlitz 2006 follow-up. Central to Controversy #10 (meta-debate on whether psi research is fundamentally sound).
A skeptic (Wiseman) and a proponent (Schlitz) each ran 16 sessions of a remote staring detection experiment at the same lab, using identical equipment, procedures, and participant pool. Receivers’ electrodermal activity (EDA) was recorded during randomly ordered 30-second stare and non-stare trials while the sender/experimenter viewed them via closed-circuit TV from 20 meters away. Wiseman’s receivers showed no significant difference (Wilcoxon z = −0.44, p = 0.64), while Schlitz’s showed significantly higher EDA during stare trials (z = −2.02, p = 0.04). The between-experimenter comparison was not significant (t = 1.39, p = 0.17). This dramatic divergence despite identical methodology is a landmark demonstration of experimenter effects in psi research.
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Cited By
- Nonlocality, Intention, and Observer Effects in Healing Studies: Laying a Foundation for the Future — Schwartz, Stephan A (2010)
- The Sense of Being Stared At: A Preliminary Meta-Analysis — Radin, Dean I (2005)
- Distant intentionality and the feeling of being stared at: Two meta-analyses — Schmidt, Stefan (2004)
- Paranormal psychic believers and skeptics: a large-scale test of the cognitive differences hypothesis — Gray, Stephen J (2016)
- Why Psychologists Must Change the Way They Analyze Their Data: The Case of Psi — Wagenmakers, Eric-Jan (2011)
- Decline Effects: Types, Mechanisms, and Personal Reflections — Protzko, John (2017)
- Entertaining Without Endorsing: The Case for the Scientific Investigation of Anomalous Cognition — Schooler, Jonathan W (2018)
- The Efficacy of "Distant Healing": A Systematic Review of Randomized Trials — Astin, John A (2000)
Companion
- The Sense of Being Stared At, Part 1: Is It Real or Illusory? — Sheldrake, Rupert (2005)
- The Sense of Being Stared At, Part 2: Its Implications for Theories of Vision — Sheldrake, Rupert (2005)
- Fundamentally Misunderstanding Visual Perception: Adults’ Belief in Visual Emissions — Winer, Gerald A (2002)
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📋 Cite this paper
Wiseman, Richard, Schlitz, Marilyn J (1997). Experimenter Effects and the Remote Detection of Staring. Journal of Parapsychology.
@article{wiseman_schlitz_1997_experimenter_staring,
title = {Experimenter Effects and the Remote Detection of Staring},
author = {Wiseman, Richard and Schlitz, Marilyn J},
year = {1997},
journal = {Journal of Parapsychology},
}