THE strongINVISIBLEstrong GAZE THREE ATTEMPTS TO REPLICATE SHELDRAKES.pdfVIP

Lobach Bierman THE INVISIBLE GAZE: THREE ATTEMPTS TO REPLICATE SHELDRAKEíS STARING EFFECTS Eva Lobach, Dick J. Bierman University of Amsterdam ABSTRACT Sheldrake has reported a large number of studies on the feeling of being stared at from behind, mostly conducted in school settings with children aged between 8 and 18. Almost all these studies show that people guess consistently above chance. We did three studies to attempt to replicate Sheldrakeís staring studies under conditions of sensory shielding. Participant input their responses in the computer. In total 188 sessions resulted in 4784 trials. The over-all hitrates were 50.6% (N=53), 52.1% (N=45), and 49.7% (N=37) respectively. Because response bias is believed to confound results for stare and non-stare trials, these are not analyzed separately here, in contrast to Sheldrakeís reports. In study 1 two skeptics and two believers acted as starer. Participants never met the starer who was behind a one-way screen in an adjacent room. Hitrate was marginally significant only for skeptic starers. Extraversion of the participant was irrelevant. It was observed that the most extraverted starer, who was a skeptic, produced the best results. In study 2 participants were being looked at through a hidden camera. Participants never met the starer. The over-all hitrate of 52.1% was not statistically significant. In this study, skin conductance level of the participant was also used as dependent variable. Initially, when participants were not informed of the staring,