The psychic staring effect (sometimes called scopaesthesia) is a supposed phenomenon in which humans detect being stared at by extrasensory means. The idea was first explored by psychologist Edward B. Titchener in 1898 during a series of laboratory experiments that found only negative results. It has been the subject of contemporary attention by parapsychologists and fringe researchers, most notably Rupert Sheldrake.
Famous quotes containing the words psychic, staring and/or effect:
“Despite crime’s omnipresence, things work in society, because biology compels it. Order eventually restores itself, by psychic equilibrium.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“Humility is not my forte, and whenever I dwell for any length of time on my own shortcomings, they gradually begin to seem mild, harmless, rather engaging little things, not at all like the staring defects in other people’s characters.”
—Margaret Halsey (b. 1910)
“Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral. They have the same effect of grating incongruity as the sound of a coarse voice breaking the solemn silence of night.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)