Staring someone in the eye can alter your consciousness

The Italian psychologist Giovanni Caputo, from the University of Urbino, has discovered a very curious way of getting another person to reach another level of consciousness without using any drugs.

The tests carried out by Caputo had the participation of 20 adult volunteers (15 women and 5 men).

They were placed in pairs sitting in a dimly lit room and one meter apart. All they had to do was look into the eyes of the person sitting in front of you for 10 minutes.

The volunteers did not know the purpose of the investigation. They only knew that they should stare at each other for 10 minutes.

eye contact

After 10 minutes, the participants had to answer a series of questions related to what they felt during and after the experience.

The research tried to find out if the participants had dissociative symptoms, which are what make a person feel disconnected from the reality around them. All of this can be caused by drugs like alcohol, LSD, and ketamine.

Thanks to the Caputo study we know that these symptoms can also be caused when a person stares at a person for 10 minutes without understanding the reason why he is looking at her.

The participants in the experiment reported that they had perceived new sensations that they had never had before.

We can infer that looking long and uninterrupted into the eyes of another person it can affect our state of visual and mental perception.

blow my mind

Christian Jarrett, editor of the British Psychological Society, also provided more data on the results of the study. He said that participants reported changes in the perception of colors, sounds and even changes in their notions of time and space.

Regarding the perception of people's faces, 90% of the participants also reported changes in facial features. Of these, 75% said they had seen monsters, 50% said they saw features of their own face on the other person's face, and 15% said they saw faces of family members.

The mirror experiment.

mirror experiment

Five years before this experiment, Caputo performed a similar test with 50 volunteers who had to look at themselves in a mirror for 10 minutes.

In this test, even before the first minute, the volunteers had the feeling that they were facing A stranger.

What do you think of the results of this experiment? Have you ever had an experience of this kind? Leave us your comment.

Source: science alert
Images: Shutterstock


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