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Walking home at night is not the same for women
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Der_Einzige 3y ago[flagged]
- wly_cdgr 3y ago[flagged]
- SketchySeaBeast 3y agoIn the last picture why is there a hotspot on the streetlight? Are men moths?
- neuronerdgirl 3y agoOutside of real-world context, both men AND women will naturally focus on objects in a scene that are brighter than their surroundings. What's more interesting here is that the context of an outdoor real world scene with an instruction to imagine walking through it breaks this tendency more in women than in men.
- wly_cdgr 3y agoIt's funny when people on here get salty about posts roasting men given that there are probably like 3-4 people who qualify as real men on here
- hereme888 3y agoHard truth? Obviously women need to be more careful when walking alone at night; they're less able to defend themselves than men due to obvious physical differences. This "hard truth" has been obvious and logical to mankind since the beginning.
- intrepidpar 3y agoIf you go by statistics on public sphere violence it's really men who should be more on the lookout.
- hereme888 3y agoBecause men get into fights with each other, and we're wired to protect our women. If you go by statistics on abductions and abuse, it's really women who should be more on the lookout. Men are less worried about some guy jumping out of a bush at night. Just fight him and move on; women can't fight back the same.
- jeltz 3y agoOr theoretically possible: the risks are equally big for both genders but men tend to be on the lookout less so end up in trouble for often.
- hereme888 3y agoHow is it even controversial that women are more at risk walking alone at night? This is ridiculous.
- falcolas 3y agoA non-trivial percentage of women are physically larger and stronger than a non-trivial percentage of men, yet those smaller men are not scared to walk alone at night for fear of running across a large woman. The real hard truth is that some men assault women. The problem is that the assaulters look like every other man, meaning women can't target their fears at just the bad men.
- arandomusername 3y agoThe percentage of women that are physically stronger than men is extremely small. Negligibly small. But also true, men are more violent.
- aquilaFiera 3y ago[flagged]
- px43 3y agoNot sure why that would be ironic. Seems absolutely fitting, and the most likely place for a study like this to occur. Studying women in danger at BYU is like going to the antarctic to study penguins.
- duxup 3y agoI'm skeptical of this study but I think it is kinda unfair to the folks who did the study to have issues like this overshadow or clutter the conversation of their actual work. The researchers likely have nothing to do with those articles.
- chefandy 3y agoSeems to be an indictment of BYU's track record with sexual assault-- they didn't question the study.
- duxup 3y agoAnd yet it is the top comment in a thread about the study, not a thread about the schools track record.
- chefandy 3y agoSorry, I'm not quite sure what you're saying. Do you mean aquilaFiera's comment is commenting on the study itself in a way that I've missed, or that their criticism of the school is criticism of the study by proxy because it's in a comment section about an article about the study? It still seems to me that they're commenting on the behavior of the school and using the study as a point of comparison.
- intrepidpar 3y agoTldr: They tracked where people looked when walking at night. Women look more at the periphery, men stay more focused on the center of their vision. Then there's some PC non-sequitur about how it's sad the world is so dangerous for women.
- ceejayoz 3y agoAh, yes, Brigham Young University, notorious for their PCness. > Students attending BYU agree to follow an honor code, which mandates behavior in line with teachings of the church, such as academic honesty, adherence to dress and grooming standards, abstinence from extramarital sex, from same-sex romantic behavior, and from the consumption of alcohol and other drugs. Undergraduate students are also required to complete curriculum in LDS religious education for graduation regardless of their course of study. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigham_Young_University https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigham_Young_University
- flir 3y agoThey didn't track where people looked. They tracked where people clicked - in other words, where they said they looked. I believe the result, but I don't believe the study.
- datameta 3y agoPeople clicked on features they thought were more important - ergo where they would normally be spending more time looking had they been physically there. If you have an issue with this study, how do you propose to test their hypothesis ?
- flir 3y agoUse eye-tracking instead. Gets closer to what people do, rather than what they claim they do. You know that thing where >95% of people claim to be above-average drivers? I'd like to rule that out. Once again, because I think my comment will be misconstrued if I don't attach a disclaimer: I believe the result, but I don't believe the study.
- paxys 3y agoI remember reading a Reddit thread a while ago asking women what they would do if they became men for a day, and all the top answers were variants of "I'd walk around the neighborhood alone at night" and "I'd get on a crowded bus/train because I wouldn't be scared of getting groped". It was eye opening to see how mundane stuff I take for granted isn't quite so for half of the world.
- watwut 3y agoThis likely depends from the place tho. Because for example where I live, women brave public transport often, frequently and normally. They would look at you as having second head if you suggested they are scared of being in a train. Some places are more dangerous, others are safe. And also, some families raise girls to be afraid even if the place they live at is actually safe.
- alex_lav 3y agoCurious what the goal of this comment is?
- watwut 3y agoThere is this online idea that all women are constantly afraid of normal things all the time everywhere. I find it overstated amd to be honest frequently insulting. No I am not afraid to use public transportation in my city, generally around Europe or USA or whatever. Yes, I am aware that some other cities are super dangerous. But still, most women I know are not afraid to use public transport. People who just assume I am not capable to handle myself or I am scared of safe situations are frequently the ones putting unnecessary obstacles between me and what I need or want.
- alex_lav 3y agoThis comment is definitely a lot more substantive than the previous. Thank you for sharing your perspective!
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- datameta 3y agoDespite the supposedly obvious nature of certain conventional wisdom, scientific study is still important.
- barbazoo 3y agoI don't get from the post at all the correlation of "environmental scanning women conduct as they walk in the dark" and "Walking home at night is not the same for women". What am I missing here?
- mholt 3y agoFrom the article: > "The resulting heat maps represent perhaps what people are thinking or feeling or doing as they are moving through these spaces"
- Ensorceled 3y agoWomen scan their environments constantly (hyper-vigilence) when in places where men typically do not (walking in the dark being one of those).
- barbazoo 3y agoI should have quoted a different part of the post. How about the correlation with > clear visual evidence of the constant environmental scanning women conduct as they walk in the dark, a safety consideration the study shows is unique to their experience. I just don't get how this is clear evidence about "safety considerations"
- ethanbond 3y agoDo you have an alternative theory that's more compelling than the one that many, many women report about their own thinking?
- chillingeffect 3y agoStudy did not look into actual walking, but asked participants to use imagination and click on areas of interest. While the title is certainly true, this study does not support it. It's a different context.
- quenix 3y agoThat's quite the deal breaker
- FleaFlicker99 3y agoYeah - isn't this more measuring anticipated fear of a situation vs actual risk? Of course the risk _is_ higher if you're less able to defend yourself, but we're talking different measurements here. And I don't buy that the different visual scanning patterns necessarily mean what the article suggests. Something you're not allowed to say today: there are differences between men and women, and some of those probably include the ways that we scan for danger. Perhaps males are more worried about armed threats up ahead while females are more worried about stalking panthers in the bushes, etc (pick your scenario). I would think I'd also be very mindful of risk if I was very small or weak, very young, visibly injured, etc - regardless if I was a man/boy or not. These things seem like basic primal wisdom that transcends species.
- mc32 3y agoIn the US this would be true in many, many areas. It’s not true in some countries, even in some that could be classified as patriarchal, such as Japan.
- adastra22 3y agoViolence against women is very much a thing in Japan too. Heck, they invented the women-only train car to address the safety issue. I don’t know where you’re getting that idea from.
- mc32 3y agoLooking at large countries, Japan has one of the lowest incidence of rape against females --compare it to North America, South America, Australia and Africa. There is no comparison. In Europe, Sweden and France are outliers with a very high incidence. In the Middle East, there are countries with low rates.
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago> Looking at large countries, Japan has one of the lowest incidence of rape against females... And that's good! Really, really good! But it's not everything. Now ask about incidents of women getting groped on trains in Japan.
- mc32 3y agoTrains aren't streets. Yes, they could work lots and lots on their groping culture. But the point is women in Japan feel safe walking at night on the streets, unlike many, many places in the US.
- adastra22 3y agoLowest incidents of reported rape against women/girls does not mean the numbers are actually low. Japan has a lot of issues with police not doing their job on these cases, and a lot of social blowback from reporting (e.g. if it got in the news, the woman could lose her job with no recourse, or be expelled from school).
- DustinBrett 3y agoDo they look around more in general & in the daytime I would wonder too.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Invictus0 3y agoNot a very convincing study
- naasking 3y agoNot too surprising, but it's interesting that if women are scanning for threats, they're probably doing it wrong as your peripheral night vision is better: https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/31903/why-is-my-peripheral-vision-better-for-seeing-in-the-dark https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/31903/why-is-my-...
- mholt 3y agoThat might be an artifact of using pictures of paths instead of actually walking the paths for the study. It seems that the brain, despite the lack of peripheral in the study, still wants to focus on those highlighted areas.
- caturopath 3y agoIt's almost as if clicking on photos with a mouse isn't a very good way to measure night walking behavior, isn't it?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- shermantanktop 3y agoWomen often observe that men are eager to correct them and explain what they are doing wrong. I can’t help reading your post with that in mind.
- naasking 3y agoAnd I can't help but notice that your sexist framing does nothing but distract from a factual discussion.
- neuronerdgirl 3y agoYour peripheral vision has greater ACUITY at night but that doesn't improve its RESOLUTION. Your peripheral vision will be better able to alert you to movements at night. You will still be better able to identify objects - and threats - with your focal vision.
- t8sr 3y agoThis is cool study, and the results match my intuition. Without trying to go off-topic, it's interesting that the actual study involved no walking, or even eye tracking. The data is self-reported from showing the participants images on a computer, and then having them click at where they would look. Years ago, when I did my driver's license, they showed us a study done in the freaking 80s, that captured with full eye-tracking what drivers were looking at while actually driving. With that technology now available pretty cheap off the shelf, I'm surprised at how low-tech this is. Is research funding in public health really this low?
- scintill76 3y ago> asked them to click on areas in the photo that caught their attention I was disappointed it didn't use eye tracking instead. Maybe the clicking method is more accurate than I think though.
- caturopath 3y agoIt's sweet you are willing to be so generous, but I think you are just being optimistic about how bad the state of external validity in social science research is.
- duxup 3y ago>Chaney and co-authors Alyssa Baer and Ida Tovar showed pictures of campus areas at Utah Valley University, Westminster, BYU and the University of Utah to participants and asked them to click on areas in the photo that caught their attention. That seems like an interesting way to handle this. I'm not sure how much I believe that data is entirely accurate. I met some folks who tried using eye tracking to make their software more efficient (the cameras were very apparent, this wasn't some secret study), they compared that to what people told them they focused on in the software and they found that users were terrible narrators as far as telling them what they spent time on or looked at. Both bits of data were handy for them, but I'm not sure just clicking on an image makes sense here. The article then goes on to tie this to violence ... that seems like a pretty big leap. Doesn't mean it isn't true, but I'd like to see something more of a real clear connection to the images specifically. It's possible because of the threat of violence women are more observant of the periphery .. or they just do that naturally?
- chroma 3y agoI think a lot of men don't realize that for most women, the feeling of walking around alone in a normal place is equivalent to a man walking around in a very sketchy neighborhood. Almost any man can overpower a woman and, if he really wanted to, kill her with his bare hands. But if a man wants to attack another man, his chance of success is only as good if he has a weapon of some kind. It is for this reason that I encourage women to carry weapons and train with them. Even if it's just pepper spray, it's better than nothing. And like a fire extinguisher or a tourniquet, it only has to come in handy once to be worth all the trouble of keeping it around.
- datameta 3y agoFurthermore, self-defense classes will pay off even if never directly used. Knowing you are better able to defend yourself is a great confidence boost and balm for anxiety - it lets you carry yourself differently (emotionally and physically), which decreases your chances of being seen as a target.
- seneca 3y agoI think any man born before about 1990 could tell you that. The lack of understanding comes from the attempts to teach children that men and women are exactly the same. That well intentioned approach has left a couple of generations very confused about some very basic truths like this.
- arandomusername 3y agoFirstly, I have no doubt that women are a lot more vulnerable at night. That said, I don't think this "study" is fair. > asked them to click on areas in the photo that caught their attention I too, would click on whatever is lit up in the centre, but when actually walking at night I constantly watch my surroundings, as anyone probably does that didn't grow up a sheltered life or in a super safe area.
- neuronerdgirl 3y agoTheir point is women largely WEREN'T clicking in the lit up center, even though the men were. Your counter only presumes that men would look more like the women's clicking in real life, but you havent explained the observable difference in clicking behaviors by posing that, it's a different question.
- arandomusername 3y agoMy point is that clicking on an image is not representative of what they would look at when actually walking through the area.
- neuronerdgirl 3y agoThere is a pretty good argument to be made that asking someone to imagine walking in these scenes and click on areas of interest/concern is at least a partial proxy for where they will actually look when placed in that context. It is not reasonable to wholesale dismiss studies and their results simply because you think they could have operationalized their hypothesis differently or better. These undergrads did a pretty respectable job within the scientific resources at their disposal, and have presented a real result; now science must grapple with what that result is telling us and why these differences occurred. Moreover, one could argue that to your point, if clicking is not actually looking then why is there a difference at all? It's just clicking on a picture right?
- almatabata 3y agoIt could be that men rely more on peripheral vision to identify threats on the side possibly?
- kstenerud 3y agoI'd really like to see an expanded study that included pictures of both night time and daylight, in various settings (downtown, affluent neighborhood, sketchy area, highway, forest, hiking trail, jungle, desert, etc). I think it would help to tease out what is instinctual vs learned behavior.
- caturopath 3y agoThat would tell us a lot about where participants from their pool click on images, but I'm not sure it tells us anything about any questions worth caring about. We all know that women are and must be more wary while doing things like walking alone at night, but we aren't going to learn about it from clicking on pictures with a mouse.
- caturopath 3y ago> Each participant looked at 16 images and were told to imagine themselves walking through those areas. Jesus Christ. I'm not sure what that tells us, but not much. If the labels on the heatmaps were reversed, I wonder if I would have updated the other direction at all the issue.
- intalentive 3y ago>Why can’t we live in a world where women don’t have to think about these things? Human nature. Baked-in survival and reproduction strategies.
- mholt 3y agoWouldn't that imply that the men -- the protectors -- are doing more scanning and are more aware of their surroundings?
- Slava_Propanei 3y ago[dead]
- fastball 3y agoStudy would be much better if the participants were wearing glasses that surreptitiously tracked actual eye movements while walking home, rather than pointing at points-of-interest in an image. For some reason this media coverage just mentions nighttime, but the actual study had participants do this process for daytime photos as well, and honestly it shows a similar pattern – so not sure the evidence supports the claim in the coverage (as usual). And that part is not addressed in the study – anecdotally, women are much more scared of walking alone in the dark than in broad daylight. So if pointing out the periphery is an indication of fear, why is it still a strong tendency from females in the daylight, when they should be less scared?
- neuronerdgirl 3y agoMy first thought was the actual publication reads like a student paper, especially the methods. Lo and behold: > Acknowledgments The Skaggs Faculty Mentoring Award at BYU for its financial support to mentor undergraduate students in research. Yea. Overall, the methodology itself appears sound, though this subject is outside my own wheelhouse and I don't feel like doing a full review. But stuff like this: > Knowing the existence of statistical clusters naturally leads to seeking to discern between those clusters globally and locally, that is, are these clusters arranged in different places in the images between genders and if so, where at? is really odd to see in a methods section. My biggest surface critique, though, and a knock on both the faculty advisor and the peer reviewers/editors for this journal, is that there is zero explanation of how the authors operationalized "entrapment" in their photos. Moreover, there was nothing stopping them from just explicitly excluding people who were familiar with their non-BYU locations (it's a simple Qualtrics option) which would have strengthened their operationalization of familiar va unfamiliar. That said, it's an interesting study and a clever way to look at the question in a large group with limited time resources. I'd like to see a VR version with eye tracking for better real-world fidelity.
- chefandy 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago[dupe] More discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39325648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39325648
- cassianoleal 3y agoItself dupe of a previously flagged submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39301091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39301091
- PuffinBlue 3y agoIt’s a shame this study appears to have been conducted so poorly, the topic is very interesting. The study had people click on photos of where their interest would be if they were walking. They were not eye-tracked when actually walking. This is a significant difference. Particularly because at night your peripheral vision is much more acute at detecting shape/silhouette/tonal variation and in my experience also motion. The latter is very relevant for detecting threats. I was poor growing up had to walk a lot, including at night. A lot of time was spent walking in not the best areas! Most of my teenage life seemed to be spent in the dark too, if I ever wanted to see friends! And then military service with endless night exercises. Add to that living in the UK with 17+ hours of darkness in the winter. I can definitely say that after decades of walking at night and many many thousands of miles (I have a nearly 200 already this year already) you learn there’s a certain way of ‘seeing’ without looking at something directly. So I very much question the claims of the study in so much as it states where your eyes actually look when walking in real world circumstances. What I don’t doubt is that in general women have more to worry about and fear in public spaces, that their attention is drawn to different things than men in some circumstances and that there likely is a difference in scene scanning behaviour. A proper study on this would be very interesting to see and might actually help better inform the design of public spaces for night time use.
- almatabata 3y agoI hope they make a follow up study with some kind of VR contraption. It would be also great to get a read of things like heart rate, blood pressure and things like adrenaline.
- chefandy 3y agoFlagged? Wow.
- caturopath 3y agoThough the headline is sadly correct, the article is about a study that is random crap that doesn't speak to the well-known issue.
- chefandy 3y agoThat’s not what flagging something is for— it’s for posts that break the site guidelines— and that’s why the flag has been manually removed.
- caturopath 3y agoHeadlines get changed to things that actually reflect the link's content all the time. Is flagging not a way for users to try to get that done? (I would have guessed so, but I honestly don't know. I certainly didn't flag this post.)
- chefandy 3y agoFlagging is commonly used to de-rank articles people disagree with, and considering the initial comments in the article, I’d eat my hat if people flagged it in good faith based on the headline alone.