What happens if you stare at someone?

In many cultures, such as that of the indigenous Pemon of Venezuela, staring at another person is a sign of disrespect.For others it is the opposite, it is clear that you do not hide anything.

To shy people For example, they have a hard time keeping their eyes and usually lower their eyes; when we are in love, we even feel a tingling in the stomach that makes us smile and look away.

For us the phrase "the eyes are the mirror of the soul" is very clear: you say with your eyes what many Sometimes you can't say with your mouth.

But looking, watching, looking closely at another person's eyes for 10 minutes...would make us feel weird, not to say bad.Are you still reading to see what it is?

A strange study: What happens when you stare at someone?

A group of researchers from the Italian University of Urbino asked the question that gives title to our article, What if you stare at someone for a while?

To do this, they recruited 40 volunteers, all unknown to each other, who had to work in pairs.

experiment was simple: sit one in front of another, in a room in the middle of the light, and staring at each other for 10 minutes.

Another group had to stay in another room, alone, also in gloom, staring at the wall.

After 10 minutes, all volunteers were asked to fill out a questionnaire that should reflect what they experienced during the exercise.

The results were amazing: Everyone who saw other people said feeling very strange things , like for example, that the colors around were more intense, or that the sounds were amplifying or disappearing, and that time seemed to pass more slowly.

What happens if you stare at someone?

But what is most amazing Cause was that many pointed out that when you look at someone the face of the other person is altered.90% of the volunteers indicated that the face of the interlocutor had been deformed, and the 7 5% said it had changed so much that it looked like a monster .

50% saw their own features on the face of the other person, and 15% said they recognized the features of a loved one.

What if we look at a mirror? What happens when you stare at someone and you are yourself?

The same researchers also did an experiment similar to the previous one in which they asked 50 people to see their own reflection fixedly in a mirror.

The interesting thing was that they also reported strange experiences, very similar to altered states of consciousness .

In this case, 66% of the participants saw remarkable deformations in his own face , 18% the face of one of his parents, 28% saw an unknown person, 48% monsters, another 18% saw animal features and finally 28% archetypal images , like a child or an old woman.

A curious fact: everyone suffered a dissociative effect of identity, and said that they had the feeling that another person was watching them from the mirror , even many began to give signs of anxiety and real fear.

What happens if you stare at someone?

Everyone also reported feeling uneasy and out of control.

Is there any explanation for these visions?

Researchers explain these "hallucinations" as a result of "consciousness returning to reality." This means that in an exercise like this, the mind begins to wander, and when it returns At present (after a period of dissociation), you need time to adapt so that your perceptions return to normal.

This was verified by contrasting the experiences of the participants who only saw the wall, since they did not they had a focal point to fix their eyes, but their eyes could move all the time, which prevented them from reaching that dissociative state of consciousness.

On the other hand, already at the end of the 18th century, Erasmus Darwin discovered that if we stare at an object, its color may disappear from our sight.If you want to practice, take a sheet of white paper, place a circle of two centimeters in diameter and stare at it.You will see that the color red it will fade away until it disappears.This is known as Troxler's fading effect .

This effect is explained by neuronal adaptation, because when you stop receiving stimuli your activity decreases, and This is how there is a change in our perception.

When we stare, we do not change the stimulus and our brain "gets bored", so it begins to "disconnect" from reality and we stop perceiving the face in front of us as a whole, then producing a sort of "montage" of features, of totally random collage that generates a grotesque, or at least different, image.

That montage is just our brain's attempt to fill the gaps that do not reach through l in view, using experiences, conjectures or own expectations.That is why not everyone sees the same or suffer the same distortions.

If you dare to do this experiment at home, keep in mind that it will be more Effective if the room is dimly lit and you get closer to the mirror or the other person.And if you can, don't blink.

Have you been interested in discovering what happens when you stare at someone? Discover also:

-Scopaesthesia: And you? Do you feel the looks?

Images: Jerry , malloreigh , Becca , Matthew Rice

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