‘Big Brother’ Isn’t Just Watching — He’s Changing How Your Brain Works

By StudyFinds

Every time you walk down a city street, electronic eyes are watching. From security systems to traffic cameras, surveillance is ubiquitous in modern society. Yet these cameras might be doing more than just recording our movements: according to a new study that peers into the psychology of surveillance, they could be fundamentally altering how our brains process visual information.

While previous research has shown that surveillance cameras can modify our conscious behavior – making us less likely to steal or more inclined to follow rules – a new study published in Neuroscience of Consciousness suggests that being watched affects something far more fundamental: the unconscious way our brains perceive the world around us.

“We found direct evidence that being conspicuously monitored via CCTV markedly impacts a hardwired and involuntary function of human sensory perception – the ability to consciously detect a face,” explains Associate Professor Kiley Seymour, lead author of the study, in a statement.

Putting surveillance to the test

The research team at the University of Technology Sydney, led by Seymour, designed an ingenious experiment to test how surveillance affects our unconscious visual processing. They recruited 54 undergraduate students and split them into two groups: one group completed a visual task while being conspicuously monitored by multiple surveillance cameras, while the control group performed the same task without cameras present.

The monitored group was shown the surveillance setup beforehand, including a live feed of themselves from the adjacent room, and had to sign additional consent forms acknowledging they would be watched. To ensure participants felt the full weight of surveillance, cameras were positioned to capture their whole body, face, and even their hands as they performed the task.

The visual task itself employed a clever technique called continuous flash suppression (CFS), which temporarily prevents images shown to one eye from reaching conscious awareness while the brain still processes them unconsciously. Participants viewed different images through each eye: one eye saw rapidly changing colorful patterns, while the other saw faces that were either looking directly at them or away from them.

‘Ancient survival mechanisms’ turn on when being watched

The results were remarkable: “Our surveilled participants became hyper-aware of face stimuli almost a second faster than the control group. This perceptual enhancement also occurred without participants realizing it,” says Seymour. This held true whether the faces were looking directly at them or away, though both groups detected direct-gazing faces more quickly overall.

This heightened awareness appears to tap into ancient survival mechanisms. “It’s a mechanism that evolved for us to detect other agents and potential threats in our environment, such as predators and other humans, and it seems to be enhanced when we’re being watched on CCTV,” Seymour explains.