In today’s digitally connected world, surveillance is no longer confined to prisons or spy thrillers—it’s woven into the very fabric of everyday life. From CCTV cameras and smart doorbells to AI-powered facial recognition and social media location sharing, we’re more observed than ever. Emerging psychological research shows this ubiquitous monitoring doesn’t just alter our public behaviour; it reshapes how we think, often without our awareness.
The concept isn’t new. In 1785, English philosopher Jeremy Bentham anticipated the Panopticon—a prison where inmates could never be sure whether they were being watched. The uncertainty itself was enough to enforce discipline. This idea, now a powerful metaphor for modern surveillance culture, finds fresh urgency in psychological science.
“Being observed has been a focus of psychological inquiry since the late 1800s,” explains Clément Belletier of the University of Clermont Auvergne. Early studies, such as Norman Triplett’s 1898 cycling experiment, showed people perform better in the presence of others. Over time, research expanded to show we tend to be more generous, less dishonest, and more compliant when under scrutiny.
But it’s not just our actions that shift—our brains do too. In a recent study led by neuroscientist Kiley Seymour at the University of Technology Sydney, participants were monitored while performing a visual task. Using a technique called continuous flash suppression, researchers found that people detected images of faces faster when they believed they were being watched, even though they were unaware that the surveillance influenced their perception.
On the other hand, this unconscious response reveals important insight: It is our cognitive structures that are made to deal with social information, especially the direction of gazes by others. Eye contact catches our attention from the earliest stages of life. Research conducted by Clara Colombatto of the University of Waterloo states that there is a heightened awareness of gaze due to an evolutionary need to identify threats and comprehend intentions. This is articulated as a basic survival trait.
Research has shown that memory performance is diminished when subjects view faces with direct gaze in comparison to those without. This suggests that even passive observation exhausts cognitive resources and thus reduces attention and effectiveness.
Colombatto says that faces or abstract patterns staring at one can elicit reactions like those invoked by direct face-to-face interaction. What matters is not so much what people see, but rather that they feel they are seen, she explains. This is referred to as mind contact by Colombatto and her team, representing an increase in psychological alertness.
Even a brief moment of observation may stimulate better behavior, but frequent monitoring may have negative consequences. She suggests that repeated observation can trigger stress reactions such as the fight-or-flight response and cause mental strain. “This degree of attention is mentally taxing and possibly even stressing our brain circuits to an extreme level,” she clarifies.
Such effects may be particularly problematic for victims of conditions such as schizophrenia or social anxieties because they are usually highly sensitive to being watched in the first place. Digital surveillance, as studies reveal, might be able to eventually undermine attention and working memory indiscriminately, especially in situations such as remote exams or offices emphasizing efficiency.
There is an idea that the control through Bentham’s Panopticon design is achieved through the perception of being observed all the time, rather than direct forcing of powers, by the French philosopher Michel Foucault. People police themselves, take on internal discipline, and undergo quiet shifts in their mental outlook. With our modern climate that is dominated by constant monitoring through digital tools, the nature of the analogy seems more relevant now than ever.
The more investigation is conducted into the impact of surveillance on cognition, the more an unequivocal truth appears: Being watched does not shape our actions, but it is a radical restructuring of how we think, consciously and subconsciously.
References: Makin S. How being watched changes how you think. Sci Am. Published May 6, 2025. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-being-watched-changes-how-you-think/
