Sinclair Secondary School Staring Experiment (Revised February 1999)
G. Wisnicki
Introduction: This experiment was conducted to determine whether a subject could detect whether they were being looked at by others. This was done by minimizing or negating the normal sensory stimuli such as visual, olfactory, oral, tactile and thermal that might produce a response.
Sheldrake (Sheldrake, 1990) reintroduced the possibility that humans could sense that they were being stared at by others. Whether this is unfounded superstition or a real ability was what was being investigated.
There are many ways to test this ability considering the restraints of time. For instance, a pair of people could take turns staring and recording the number of incorrect and correct responses a multitude of times. In this experiment it was decided to test a number of subjects once but to collect as many different subjects as possible. If one does trials on one subject repeatedly it could be argued by some that it would not have as much credence or applicability as to testing many subjects once. For example, one person being repeatedly cured of the common cold might not have the significance as many people being cured of it at least once. Whether this is legitimate would be up to the reader.
Procedure: A secondary school population from Sinclair S.S. was asked to volunteer for scientific experiments during 1997 and 1998. These took place on Wednesdays in between the time of 1010 am to 200 pm as part of their directed studies. As could be imagined, most subjects were in the age of 14 - 18 years old. Initials, birthdate, hair colour, birth order and dates of the trial are found in the results. Eye colour was not recorded as to the variability. The trials took place in a chemistry laboratory on the fourth floor. This room was chosen as there was a preparation room as well, connected by doors with a two-sided chemical fume hood in between. It was through this chemical fume hood with a vertical dimensions of 1.2 m x 1.4 m that subjects would be looked at. The fume hood was an intermediate area between those who stared at the subject and the subject as it had a clear visual access when the plexiglass shields were raised but could remove any odours that emanated from the subject or starer.
(See Figure 1)
The subjects were isolated in the room from other normal sensory stimuli besides olfactory as follows. Sight was reduced by having the subject blindfolded by a sleep mask, lights out in the room they were in, and perhaps more importantly, facing away from their starers. Auditory stimuli were reduced by having the subject wear industrial sound eliminators and asking those doing the staring not to talk. Although a subject could hear one unclearly when one was shouting within a 0.5 m range, the starers were placed 2.5 +- 0.5 m. away. If talking was heard all trials were discarded and started again. This along with the fume hood sound and the request of starers to not talk or make other signals should have minimized any auditory clues to negligible. Tactile and thermal clues should have been eliminated as the fume hood was between the subject and starers which should have drawn any of these away before they reached the subject.
Starers of the subject were to work in pairs as it was felt that there would be better compliance with their task if a peer was beside them. Pairs of starers were seated a distance as mentioned above away from the subject on the opposite side of the fume hood in a 2 m high cardboard booth. Upon entering the booth, they were given a folded paper that indicated whether they should look or not look at the subject for each of the 10 trials. Each trial would last 10 seconds. The instructions to stare or not were produced privately before the session by using the random number function on a calculator. Even numbers would generate staring directions and odd would generate not staring one day. These would then be reversed for the next sessions.
The people doing the staring or not would be signalled by person henceforth called a signaller from a number card as to when each of the 10 second trials was to start and stop. If a not-looking instruction was indicated to the starers, they were to look anywhere in the booth except at the subject. The signaller was on the other side of the cardboard wall and was not within visual sight of the starers or subject and was thus not aware of what the starers were doing or their instructions. (See Figure 1) The subject was informed of the start of the 10 second trial by the signaler who pressed a button that would turn a small electric motor in the left hand of the subject. At the end of the ten seconds, the signaler would signal with two signals for the subject to respond.
The subject would respond by moving a 3-way toggle switch in their right hand out of view of the starers. For the first 50 trials, moving the toggle switch forward would indicate that they felt they were being stared at and back would indicate not staring. This was reversed for the next 50 trials in case there was any unconcious propensity to move in one direction or the other. The next 23 trials were reversed. The final 19 were again reversed. If one so chooses they may investigate any differences.
The answer from the starer was received by a person who shall be called the recorder by a box with red and green lights. When the toggles switch was moved forward a red light flashed and when backward a green light. The recorder checked of the responses for each of the 10 trials. The recorder would indicate to the signaler that a result was obtained by pressing a button on the box which would relay a message to the signaler by a light flashing on a box in front of them. After receiving a response, the signaler would then start the next of the 10 trials.
Results were later collated after all sessions with the instructions to the starers and were tabulated in the results. Any trials that were suspected of errors such as a starer talking to their partner or a miscount were discarded. One can see in the trials number count that in total 5 results were voided.
Figure 1
Results
Results are shown below in the Microsoft Excell (CHUCK, LINK TO SPREADSHEET) spreadsheet. Two students did not have their birthdates recorded or whether they were right or left handed. It was decided to include their results as this had no effect on how they responded.
Discussion (revised December 2002)
A chi-square analysis was done and can also be found at the bottom of the aforementioned spreadsheet. The null hypothesis was that the probability of responding “yes” would be the same with and without the staring. The X2 had a value of 1.58 which was insignificant with one degree of freedom.
Since many people seem to believe in an ability to detect being stared at, many more trials will need to be done in the future to conclusively disprove this ability. (CHUCK, LINK TO ANDERSON 2 EXPERIMENT)
Sheldrake suggests continued experiments be done behind glass and closed circuit television. (Sheldrake, 1997) Unfortunately starers who wore glasses in these trials were not asked to remove their glasses although those being stared at did to accomodate the blind fold. Although seeming ridiculously contradictory, using blind subjects is also an avenue that could hopefully be investigated.
I would like to thank the students at Sinclair Secondary School in Whitby Ontario who volunteered their time to be subjects. Your results are listed by your initials, last name first. I especially would like to thank all those who took roles of signaller and recorder from the grade 10 gifted class. Lastly I would like to thank Charles (Chuck) Stewart of Anderson C.V.I. staff who helped set up the web pages.
Bibliography
Sheldrake, R. (1994), Seven experiments that could change the world. Fourth Estate, London.
Sheldrake, R. (1997) Personal correspondence, April 1997
Ary, D. (1985), Introduction to Research in Education. Holt, Rhinehart & Winston Inc., Fort Worth