Your awareness of other people vs. other people's awareness of you

I've been thinking about this for a while: what is with people and noticing or not-noticing other people? What is with people and being noticed or not being noticed? And last night there were enough family members in one place at the same time for me to poll them about their experiences in this area. I think the question I started off with was: "Do you bump into people more often or do people bump into you more often?" which I later rephrased to: "In your experience, are you more likely to not notice people, or are you more likely to not be noticed by people?"

(And then we got sidetracked and dispersed before I'd collected complete answers from everyone. I did get two people saying they didn't notice enough to know what their experience was, and two people saying that they were usually aware of other people.)

My own experience is that I'm usually aware of it if another person is near me, even if I can't see them. There's a combination of things like - you can feel and/or hear footsteps, hear clothing rustling or loud breathing, feel body heat if they're standing quite close - but there's also something else that I can't quite figure out. Aura? Electro-magnetic field? I don't know enough about that kind of thing to know whether that is a thing. Anyway, I notice when people are near me. I notice it a lot.

Spoiler: Bonus material

One of my sisters reported the same I-can-feel-it-but-I-don't-know-how sensation, and so we experimented - I moved close until we were standing about a foot apart, and both of us experienced a discomforting feeling that made us want to recoil. Then she mentioned that the feeling doesn't extend to all physical contact or closeness - just torso and face stuff. So I moved a leg over next to her legs and there was no discomfort for either of us. We also established that four to six feet is the amount of space that both of us want in-between us and other people.

Interestingly, I can stand within a foot of my mother without getting the weird feeling. Something about closeness of relationship, maybe? Except that brief experimentation with two siblings that I have about the same distance-of-relationship with as the sister mentioned above revealed that I don't get the uncomfortable feeling when within a foot of them.

Conclusion: ????

On the other hand, I can stand close behind someone (waiting in line in a small space, for example) and they won't notice me until they back up or turn around for some reason and put their elbow in my face or step on my foot. On a related note, I've walked right past friends and acquaintances without them noticing or recognising me. It got to be such a thing in my late teens that my "invisibility shield" became (and still is) a joke in my family.

So I'm still wondering - is this a thing? What is it called? What are other people's experiences in the area of noticing-and-being-noticed like? Hence a thread with a poll, so I can collect anecdata.

(P.S. I wasn't sure where I should put this, but it seems like it has something to do with brains, so I'm sticking it here. If it needs to be moved, whoops, sorry!)

 

I'm currently in the process of going through hundreds upon hundreds of family photos. There are relatively very, very few of me. There are years of my childhood documented only by my school portrait.* My theory on this is that I am someone who tends to go unnoticed. Even in my own family, I lurk on the outskirts.

On the other hand, my brother was recently amazed at my detailed recall of a family event that took place 15 years ago. So, I apparently noticed a great deal, and stored it in my long-term memory in a folder with a tab for easy reference, so to speak.


*My family used to periodically put up a screen and view our slides using an ancient projector. My mother always made note that there were many slides of me but that they were in a box that we were not currently viewing. I knew there was no such box of slides, but I let her believe they existed because she would have felt bad if she had realized. Eventually she did realize and did feel very badly, but I pretty much understood that the dynamic that caused this was not lack of my family cherishing me but something else entirely.

 

That's interesting! There aren't many pictures of me in our house, either, but that's because we were never big picture-takers anyway, and the older I got the fewer we took. So there are even fewer photos of my younger siblings than there are of me.

I don't tend to have detailed memories of people, not sure why. I definitely don't think much about people once they're not in my immediate vicinity unless I have a specific reason to (if they are a person I must contact in order to do a thing), so maybe that has something to do with it.

 

I tend to notice people around me about as well as I notice anything around me (which is middling poorly because im usually not paying a hell if a lot of attention to things outside my own head.) I had a friend in school who thought it was really funny to come up behind me in the common room and just stand there/ follow me and see how long it'd take for me to notice.

I am noticed roughly normal amounts? Like assuming Im not actually doing anything to go unnoticed people are generally aware of my presence.

(Regarding your original phrasing, holy shit i am so bad about bumping into people. Like, walls and doors and stuff too because the problem is my total lack of depth perception without glasses, but doors and walls dont get inconvenienced because of it. :( non-ideal.)

 

I often don't notice the people around me, probably more than normal. I think other people are generally well aware of me because I'm pretty obnoxious, but sometimes if I'm sitting quietly on my computer for long enough I vanish.

 

@Lissiel I actually rephrased the question because my mom was like, "I know other people are there, I just careen wildly into them anyway." She wears her glasses all the time, though; the problem seems to be controlling her body.

@BPD anon If someone sits still enough, most people will forget they're there. It's pretty interesting!

 

Hmm, I am not sure. I tend to notice a lot of details about other people, and I assume that other people do the same, so I get really anxious about small things because I'm convinced that everyone can see them and is zeroing in on them. But my family is always like, "Stop worrying! People are so self-absorbed, they never notice things about other people," and I'm like, "But I do..."

But I have no idea if people notice me or not XD

EDIT: I do frequently bump into people in crowds, but I think that's because there are so many people all moving so fast that I can't predict where they're going, so I always end up walking into them anyway. But I am pretty good at avoiding people in less crowded places.

 

i think i experience some level of hyperawareness/hypervigilance/whatever, especially when I'm out and walking around. moving things grab my attention very quickly, and i am able to determine what i want to do about them (a. nothing b. move aside c. move somewhere else d. defensive maneuvers blah blah blah).

But yeah, I am usually very aware of other people (and my personal space is pretty big. i have a history of trying to play chicken with friends to mess with them, and ended up only making myself uncomfortable. tragic.)

It's like, you know how sometimes a character in a book will be introduced by "___ woke up. he wasn't sure where he was. opening his eyes, he realized he was in his dorm room, where he had staggered in the previous night blah blah blah"? I am pretty sure that's not a real thing, but I also know that there's got to be some reason why authors include that happening. when i wake up, I always know what's happening, even if i was drunk the previous night. (i mean, i have also never been transported from one place to another while unconscious, largely because when people get close to me when i'm sleeping, I wake up.)

and this also extends to, say, reading a book. if i'm reading a book in class, i can probably still tell you a. if anyone has left the room, b. if anyone has entered the room, and c. any actions the people around me are making at me. sometimes i miss out on sound, though.

so, generally, i am more aware of other people than they are of me. and sometimes i can change my posture/bearing to be more or less noticeable

 

Waking up is generally considered a bad cliche even without the "where am I" part. Authors use it because it's an easy starting point -- you don't have to explain what happened immediately beforehand or what the character is doing because the character was asleep. Authors do the "where am I" part because waking up in a strange place is supposed to provide intrigue, not because it's normal (as far as I know). A few of the worst authors then wreck that intrigue by having the character remember in the third sentence, and what you've described there seems like a pretty awful way to insert some backstory about previous drunken escapades. It's not that you're abnormal, you've just been reading crappy literature (fanfiction?).

I have noticed that if I imagine really hard that I'm in a different bed right before I fall asleep, I'll wake up actually expecting to be in that other bed.

 

ah, thank you. I did notice that i'd been reading that a lot more in kind of shitty YA. (not that YA is shitty, i just seem to be able to find and read really shitty YA books)

 

@a tiny mushroom I think it varies from person to person. I mean, I notice people's presence, but I don't think I usually notice details about them - too focused on other stuff like figuring out How To Appropriately Socialise in the circumstances.

@boyacrossthestreet Heh, that first paragraph sounds familiar. What's your reaction like for inanimate moving objects, like silverware falling off a counter or something? I have a pretty good record of knowing when to move and when to stand still so falling objects don't hit me - well, I say "knowing", but actually I don't think I handle that in the part of my brain that thinks thoughts, my body just reacts without me. I did drop a can on my foot the other day, but it's the first time in ages and I've been super exhausted lately and that slows my reaction time for everything so I'm blaming that.

@BPD anon That explains a lot!

 

Oh man, if Im reading I have NO IDEA AT ALL that people exist. Like, my husband has scared the shit out of me on more than one occasion by touchin my shoulder while i was reading /after having talked to me for a while/.

 

I can sometimes see someone coming in (like my mother) and still be scared to death when they open their mouth and start speaking. It's ridiculous.

 

my awareness/ others' awareness of me seems to really depend on my environment. if i'm in a comfortable or "known" environment, like my house or school when i was in it or a close friend's house, i am extremely unaware of my surroundings and others. whiiich can be awkward when said friend is trying to spent time with you haha. i bump into people and objects easier (which is also a depth perception thing for me), i apparently* talk louder and for a longer time, and i take up more space in general. other people, however become much more aware of me, probably for said reasons. i'm pretty tall, 5 feet 10 3/4 inches, and am a generally clumsy person so i'm hard to miss most of the time. i'd describe myself as a person who "bumbles around" sometimes haha.

now, if i'm in an "unknown" enviroment, such as a store i've never been to, you'll find quite the opposite is true in both parties. i'm super aware of others and sort of swoop around them and behind them like there's an invisible wall between us, because i don't want anyone to brush against me on accident. i've been told* i mumble and talk very quietly, and i fold my arms or put my hands in pockets and have a smaller gait than usual. i'm not necessarily uncomfortable or anything, at least i don't feel uncomfortable, i just do that stuff naturally. on the other end, i get bumped into quite frequently, and my family looses me in the store all the time. someone once told me i'm like that one person in a video game who's ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE and can sneak around silently somehow. i'd equate these experiences to a variation of the "hypervigilance" i've seen described by jacktrash on his blog sometimes. that might not be right though.

*i say apparently because i have little to no sense of volume, in reference to myself. like, i'm good at tone and inflection and such most of the time but i can't really hear what others are talking about when they say i'm "too loud" or "need to speak up". i do have a good sense of volume for other things though, if you can call "things that are hurting my head are too loud" a sense of volume.

 

this. this is the one exception to everything i just said. reading is such an attention suck for me, the whole world dissapears.

 

Me too! Haha holy shit. People seem to find it hilarious when I literally watch them approaching me and still jump noticeably when they say 'hello'.
I also flinch at things happening like across the street if the movement is sudden enough. And if I decide someone is interesting I will notice a lot of things about them- I have the same problem of noticing small details like spots and suchlike and therefore not really believing anyone when they say other people won't notice them on me.
And then there are the times when I just notice nothing and nobody, or I notice at the time and then immediately forget. Leading to conversations like 'Where's your father?' 'I don't know.' 'He must have told you if he was going out.' 'Probably but I don't remember.'
This does not make me very popular. xP

 

hah, if it's falling at me, it will never hit me. It's like when you're crossing the street, you can totally time it so it misses you.
if i'm trying to catch it, it usually bounces dramatically off of me and hits the floor.
my brain sees action and screams the rest of me into cooperating.


@Deresto , I am also that person! Usually I have to put effort into being noticed. i'm like 6'1 and a lanky motherfucker, and people have lost me in stores. I somehow gravitate towards the one area in the store that no one can see me in. (went to barnes & noble the other day, settled down in the one area with actual tall bookshelves, and was reading graphic novels for like an hour before my friend actually found me)

 

i'm not entirely sure about my awareness of other people but i know that i often have an "invisibility shield"
which i always thought was 'cause i'm small and quiet and like to cover myself in blankets and curl up in places
people joke a bit about it, though it also sometimes worries them

 

if you mean hypervigilance i have it bad and if you mean hyperempathy i have that too oops
love being in school and feeling all the stressed out/tired/judgemental emotions all around me
it's so bad, sometimes when people are talking to me i'll picture them saying what they say right before they say it
and yes, our nervous system has electric fields and hormones, body language/tone/facial expression there's a lot of stuff we're sensing that we don't consciously notice
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/mirror-neurons.html
here's an interesting video on one of the ways we sense each other

i don't know how much people notice me but sometimes i accidentally scare people cause they didn't lol

 

Huh. I can't focus on a book if people are making noise around me (unless there's enough noise for it to turn into crowd-noises, which are somehow easier to ignore). I like to go somewhere by myself to read.

@lvkz (I've been reading your name as ivkz, no wonder I couldn't get the thingy to work) I finally got around to watching that video and it was super cool, thanks for linking it!

I ... don't think I meant hypervigilance? But I don't know where the line is between "noticing people a lot" and hypervigilance.

(Also: It's 1.30 a.m. and I can't brain and don't energy so I don't really have anything to say but I read everyone's posts! Thank you for your anecdata, I do so like looking at the variety of experiences people have.)