The Sense of Being Stared At: And Other Unexplained Powers of the Human Mind by Rupert Sheldrake

Author:Rupert Sheldrake [Sheldrake, Rupert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307801166
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2011-07-19T18:30:00+00:00

Why should there be such a striking difference between the looking and the not-looking trials?

If there really is a tendency for people to know when they are being looked at, they would indeed tend to be right when they are being looked at.

Figure 11.2 Results from the staring experiments of Coover (1913), showing the number of subjects who were more right than wrong compared with those who were more wrong than right.

By contrast, in the control trials people are not being looked at. They are being asked to detect the absence of an effect, which has no parallel in real-life conditions. And, indeed, under those conditions the results were no better than chance; the subjects were just guessing at random.

Interestingly, the highly positive results with selected and experienced subjects show not only that some people score better than others, but that people can improve their scores with practice, both in looking and in not-looking trials. Although novices tend to score best in looking trials, and at chance levels in not-looking trials (Figure 11.1), those who are tested repeatedly and given feedback tend to improve in both kinds of trials. It seems possible to learn to detect the difference between being looked at and not being looked at.

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