Hanrui Shen
Portfolio
Transdisciplinary Inquiry
Introduction
I would like to announce that I decided to do ‘ the feeling of being stared at’ which is Alan’s proposal and I am also interested in his topic, so I talked with him to follow his proposal to do my report, but I am going to improve the methodology. It is individual because we do not do the experiment together and I have my own idea and work. Why I abandoned my plan? Because I did Auto-driving which is hard to do the experiment and I cannot continue to do my work, I thought I have some logic problems, and something is not meaningful in my first assignment. Therefore, I decided to change it to do ‘the feeling of being stared at.' I am going to follow Alan’s temporary table but we are doing individual, and I will develop and present my idea and think around the work.
RQ: “Can people sense when they are being watched?”
Summary
The purpose of this project is to investigate what human’s brain can do extra especially the sense. People can discover more and understand more about our brain capacity. This experiment will test 20 different people, and five people will be distributed a group which is going to follow the proposal. However, I decided to ask YES/NO question to one team, not how many watching. The outcome will be analyzed considering respondents/object feedback.
Methodology
Certain parts of the experiment will follow proposal, which begins at week 7 and takes two weeks. I found 10 AUT students and ten visitors to participation the trial. 10 AUT students separated two teams, and one team has one person be an object, which was facing the wall and covered eyes. Other experimenters were random to entry the room that I booked the room in AUT. When each trial finished (20-30second) I asked the answer from the object and recorded. The targeting ten visitors are different age groups because I want to compare the different age of people can sense stare, and it might influence the result. Those ten people test 4 times who objected four times and just random trial, but they only need to answer YES/NO. It focused on different people, not watchers. In development, I asked all experimenters that do you think you have the ability to sense stare because I would like to know that the public recognition their capacity and when they believe that they can detect stare, whether improve the accuracy rate or not.
Results
Table.1 and Table.2 present that can make experimenters sense stares, which is different age group.
In this table, visitor A, B, C, D, E are respectively 19, 25, 35, 41, 50 years old.
Test 1 Table.1
Table.2, visitor A, B, C, D are respectively 22, 27, 34, 42, 53 years old.
Test 2 Table.2
Table.3 shows every respondent rate of accuracy in different age groups.
Line chart.3
Table.1 and Table.2 are volunteers to participate the experiment, and those people are different ages. The rate of accuracy of these two tables is 10 percent and 15 percent higher than people chance (50%). More specifically, in the table.1, visitors ‘C, D, E’ only respond one incorrect answer and ‘A and B’ respond two. In table.2, respondent ‘A’ did one right answer, and ‘E’ are all correct. Recording to Sheldrake, In North America and Europe, 70 to 97 percent of the populations have experienced the sense of being stared at (2001). Those results are all most I expected it might prove most human can sense stare.
Interestingly, ‘A’ is the youngest group (19,22), in those two tables it gets five incorrect and three correct, and it is only 37.5% accuracy, which is quite lower than human probability (50%). However, ‘E’ is the oldest group (50,53) just gets one wrong answer and the rate of accuracy is 87.5% that is extremely higher than ‘A’ group.Line chart.3 and Table.4 show the object answer of how many watchers in 16 trials and results. Finally, Line chart.3 presents a great increase trend, which is from young to old. There are no references to prove that seniors are better sense stare than younger people but the data showed the trend and the older people might have more experience about they are being watched in their work or life.
Table.4 and Table.5 focus on that can object sense how many people are looking.
Test 3 Table.4
Test 4 Table.5
Table.4 and Table.5 are from the all the data collected from AUT students, and some results go the expected outcomes differently, which it is deeper than YES/NO question (Table.1 and Table.2). Comparing Table.4 and Table.5, the former is above the probability (25%), and Table.4 is below the likelihood (25%), which is similar to human chance, and it cannot prove people have the ability to sense how many people are watching.
Limitations
The number of experimenters to participate the experiment is not enough people and it quite narrow not accuracy because only 20 participants have no strong evident to prove the result. For some reason, two individuals in test 1 and test 4 quit the experiment in the central processing it might decrease the reliability of the research.
Conclusion
Ilan mentions that if a person has ever felt like somebody was watching, that person may have attributed that awareness to a sense of unease or a prickling on the back of your neck. However, there is nothing psychic about it; human’s brain was only picking up on cues. In fact, human’s brain is wired to inform you that someone is looking at (2011).
The data shows that if people just answer YES/NO when someone looks at them. The result of accuracy are over the human chance, but if let them respond how many people watch, they might be wrong which are around the probability. Interestingly, the two experiments present older people are more accuracy than younger people. It is meaningful but I have no evident enough to prove that.
Further development
I consider that to extend the range and number of individuals; it probably can make the project Multiplicity. For example, I can separate female and male and more detail concern age group. Before I thought after finish the experiment, I can ask objects or respondents that do you have the confidence to get the correct answer or do you believe you have the ability to know when someone looks at you. That might make more attractive to the project because it is meaningful and we can know deeper about this question and this ability can be improved.
Reference:
Ilan, S. (2011). How You Know Eyes Are Watching You | Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-narcissus-in-all-us/201102/how-you-know-eyes-are-watching-you
Sheldrake, R. (2001). Experiments on the Sense of Being Stared At: The Elimination of Possible Artefacts. Journal of the Society for Physical Research, 65, 122-137. Retrieved from http://www.sheldrake.org/research/sense-of-being-stared-at/experiments-on-thesense-of-being-stared-at-eliminating-artefacts