Hi
On Mon, 7 May 2001, Larry Z. Daily wrote:
> A colleague in economics has a daughter who wants to do a science fair
> project on whether person A can perceive whether person B is looking at A
> (without, of course, A looking at B). Mom's pretty savvy, so they've got a
> nice little study designed, but they came to me to see if psychologists know
> anything about the topic. I can't even think of a name for this type of
> perception to go look it up (though I did look through all the cool S&P
> texts folks recommended). Can anyone help out with this?
Detecting that you are being stared at is part of parapsychology,
because there is no known physical way in which being looked at
could be detected (e.g., eyes do not send out rays that could be
sensed by the receiver). Here is a link to a skeptical take on
this idea.
http://www.csicop.org/si/2000-03/stare.html
You might want to disabuse your economist colleague that beliefs
about such phenomena are legitimate or at least main-stream areas
of psychology, especially given the rather wierd ideas that many
people have about psychology in the first place. Scientific
psychologists do, however, play a major role in debunking such
myths (e.g., see the contributions of psychologists in the
Skeptical Inquirer, the PESTs List, ...).
Best wishes
Jim
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James M. Clark (204) 786-9757
Department of Psychology (204) 774-4134 Fax
University of Winnipeg 4L05D
Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
CANADA http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/~clark
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