I look mostly at the ground to avoid stepping on dog poo.
We're just scanning for the bear...
Submitted 2 weeks ago by ickplant@lemmy.world to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/91245f6f-4551-4c6e-bec7-6c7e5739902c.jpeg
Comments
callyral@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
ThunderComplex@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Yeah I’m a hard ground starer too. But def scanning periphery when not looking down. Especially at night when it’s most dangerous but I’ve always avoided going outside at night as much as possible.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
that specifically is known as Rape Corridor, so of course the women aren’t looking straight ahead
VoteNixon2016@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Makes sense for the school that expels women for being assaulted. As if I needed another reason to hate BYU
reabsorbthelight@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
They call it nonconsensual immorality
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
i can give you good reasons or bad reasons i got them all
NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
Broad conclusions for a study conducted on a population of ~500 undergrad students at a single religious university in one city of one state of one country.
Alvaro@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Noted. Attack men from the side, women from the front 😎
tmyakal@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
Doesn’t the Jurassic Park power-restore scene align with this, too? Muldoon gets wrecked by a raptor on his side, while Ellie immediately notices/dodges the one that pokes through the wiring.
paul@lemmy.org 2 weeks ago
Wouldn’t work, men don’t just star blankly ahead, we scan the periphery without moving our eyes. We don’t need to scan all around because our periphery is really good at spotting movement, this is why we can’t see that thing in the fridge despite being right in front of us, it’s not moving.
Rcklsabndn@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
You joke, but when I worked in a grocery store people would ask for help finding something and nine times out of ten it was literally right in front of their face.
Alvaro@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
But attacking women from the front would work??
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I’m male but when I was a kid, my mom talked about stranger danger a lot and warned me about the supposed widespread kidnappings (was in China) and warned of “strangers following me home” I constantly just look around and glance back behind me every 30 seconds or so and check if someone is following me… and same thing when in the US too
This habit just stuck with me…
I probably look weird af lol
Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I tend to turn it into a “casual sweep” of the scene. I’m looking at leaves, architecture, license plates! Well, and also getting a glimpse of whoever’s around me. From being bullied in grade school, to learning to fly in college, with growing up as a young women between the two eras, situational awareness has become baked into my existence. But it’s not a bad thing, it’s a skill.
Tangentially, I wonder how much of this increased situational awareness plays into our famous “women’s intuition”? If we’re taking in more of our surroundings, it makes sense our unconscious minds will notice more readily when something’s “off.”
As well, I’ve often considered my “luck” to come down to increased awareness. When retrospectively thinking about a sequence of events, I can sometimes put together how noticing A led to me doing B, even if I didn’t consciously think about it at the time. Like unconsciously noticing that a car in front of you is somewhat lopsided and getting the urge to switch lanes and pass them. You’re not thinking about it. But later on when that car spins out on a flat tire, you’re well past them - a safe distance away.
Or a situation that undoubtly makes people think I’m lucky - finding four-leaf clovers. A split-second scan of the ground and I can notice a four-leafer in a patch. Just a few months ago I was pumpkin-picking with my girlfriend and it happened again. We were standing outside and I was telling her about this exact phenomenon when I stopped, laughed, crouched down, plucked one particular clover, and handed it to her. “See?! It just happens!” I then proceeded to find two more, and at that point I knew I had to stop myself.
So yeah, it’s not all bad. :)
razzazzika@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Im trans, grew up male thr first 28 years of my life, and I look around everywhere, not because I thought I was in danger but because I have ADHD and cant just look in one direction. I never feared for my well being while walking at night before transition and still dont after, but that fear was never instilled in me I guess.
korazail@lemmy.myserv.one 2 weeks ago
I’d wager that women are taught to be aware of their surroundings for safety and men just don’t ever get told, so unless there’s an experience that teaches them, they tunnel vision.
Teaching situational awareness seems to be something that is lacking. Similar to critical thinking, I believe that there are skills we sometimes just don’t get taught by our parents or natural experiences. These are things we hopefully learn over time, but having them called out while we develop isn’t happening (I blame screens, but it’s nuanced).
I tend to monologue to my kids when doing routine things, like loading the dishwasher (There’s a big bowl over there that I need to save room for…) or driving (I can see a car on the on-ramp, it will want to be where I am in a few seconds, so I’m adjusting my speed); just pointing out things around me that have either a real impact or a potential one and why those items came to my attention.
Sunsofold@lemmings.world 2 weeks ago
Fun fact, that behaviour, which becomes more common among people living in areas with higher crime rates as a self-preservation technique, is viewed as suspicious behaviour by police, and is likely to get you tracked by security if you do it in a store.
Archangel1313@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
It also attracts the attention of people who are looking for an easy mark. Looking around nervously makes you look like a target in bad neighborhoods.
vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I feel like you should probably do this study again outside of BYU and more generally outside of Utah, Mormon culture especially Utah Mormon culture is weird and could definitely fuck with a study like this.
Though fun bit of personal experience with this exact scenario, my grandmother has better general visual awareness while my non visual awareness is a lot better overall. This means I subconsciously avoid things around me due to feel, sound, and smell but can be looking directly at something and not see it. Probably has something to do with the fact my eyesight is naturally fucked though, so my edge vision is basically useless for everything outside of movement since it’s basically just a blurry blob.
KeenFlame@feddit.nu 2 weeks ago
Ah yes, let’s study a cult, that seems like a splendid effort
ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I don’t trust Mormon findings until they are peer reviewed.
butternuts@piefed.zip 2 weeks ago
Until you learn the peers reviewing are more Mormons.
thorhop@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
Mormons only consider other Mormons peers, so that checks out.
arcine@jlai.lu 2 weeks ago
New proof that I am indeed a woman just dropped 💅🏻
Take that transphobes !
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Really? I scan the environment too, even check for snipers.
lb_o@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Watch out! He is behi
tja@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Crazy coincidence that he fell on his keyboard in a way that did send the comment but did not add any random letters to the message
turdas@suppo.fi 2 weeks ago
“Why can’t we live in a world where women don’t have to think about these things? It’s heartbreaking to hear of things women close to me have dealt with,” Chaney said. “It would be nice to work towards a world where there is no difference between the heat maps in these sets of images. That is the hope of the public health discipline.”
I’m not convinced this phenomenon would disappear in a world where women don’t have to think about these things. It could be an evolutionary psychology thing. Would have to repeat the experiment in different societies and environments to find out.
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Even if this was a conclusive study (sounds like there’s some issues there with selection and methodology,)….
This is probably because women are more likely to be harassed/assaulted/raped/mugged/etc.
Other vulnerable groups (trans, immigrants, etc) are probably are also scanning and maintaining better situational awareness.
It’d be nice to be able to walk down a street without making other people uncomfortable because men in general are less assholish than bears.
mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
It’d be nice to be able to walk down a street without making other people uncomfortable because men in general are less assholish than bears.
A part of it is large numbers bias. Very few people encounter bears, so very few people experience bear attacks. Even if every bear was predisposed to attacking people, there would still be very few bear attacks. But virtually everyone encounters men on a near daily basis. So even if the likelihood of an attack is extremely low on a case-by-case basis, the overall number of incidents is much higher simply because there are more cases of people encountering men.
That’s why the go-to response to “it’s not every man” essentially boils down to “sure, it’s not every man. But it’s enough of them…”
TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
It’d be nice to be able to walk down a street without making other people uncomfortable because men in general are less assholish than bears.
Eh… The vast majority of encounters with bears are generally with black bears where both sides are usually just scared of each other and scamper away.
I think most men just lack the perspective of just how vulnerable women are compared to men. Imagine if you lived in a world where you were surrounded by dudes the size of your average NFL lineman, and a non insignificant percent of them have a history of sexual violence towards someone your size… You too might be nervous walking in the dark by yourself.
I am 6’3 with a cut weight around 245lb and I have to be mindful about how I carry myself, or how closely I walk near people to not make people of any sex uncomfortable. There’s a reason a big jolly guy is a stereotype, no one is comfortable around a large dude with an attitude.
LwL@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I am nervous walking in the dark by myself. I simultaneously am relatively tall and will be perceived as male by anyone, so I also try to be wary of how I might make anyone else nervous.
The actual experience that most women have of smaller aggressions even in safer contexts probably also plays a role. I’m probably nervous walking alone at night because of a combination of being physically quite weak in spite of my looks, having experienced bullying throughout my childhood so “unpleasant random encounters” is a concept engraved into my brain, and because I’m affected by reading/hearing about any kind of assault happening to people walking alone.
Replace the bullying with “random men being assholes/threatening/worse” and most women have all 3 of those factors as well.
AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
As a somewhat paranoid person, you better believe I ain’t looking just straight ahead, even as a man. You never know who is nearby, waiting to confront you for any reason.
nednobbins@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
As a fellow paranoid person I assume you also make some effort to concral when you’re looking around; tie your shoe, check yourself out in a store window, watch reflections on cars, etc.
If some sketchy guy is following me, I want to know, without them knowing I know.
We had people come into our grade school to give us advice like that.
TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Guess I’m a woman now. Thanks PTSD. Didn’t even get the boobs.
agingelderly@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’m in the same boat. My wife is oblivious most of the time while my head is on a swivel.
tetris11@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
They used to call him the Owl in highschool, not because of his rotating head but because of the inappropriate hooting noises he made whenever his future wife walked into the room.
FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
TIL i’m a woman
ElectroLisa@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
🩵🩷🤍🩷🩵
ickplant@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
melsaskca@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Aware people look about. Unaware people don’t. But yeah, let’s divide it by gender.
PhoenixDog@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I mean, there are plenty of studies and experiences that genuinely show women have not just a greater concern for their safety, especially at night, but are far more likely to be assaulted than men.
sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
We just had somebody else in the thread show studies for how men are mugged more frequently than women. However I wouldn’t be surprised if women are threatened cat called and assaulted more often, and are looking out for more than just violent criminals.
kkj@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
The only violent crimes that women are more likely to be victims of are sexual ones. Any nonsexual violent crime is more likely to have a male victim. Is this because women are more cautious? Maybe!
MintyFresh@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Men are better at detecting motion. I would bet men are better at detecting motion in their perephiral vision too.
FinalRemix@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Right… peripheral vision in general is better at motion, but shit for details. It’s why sacchads happen seemingly at random; often something is signalled in the periphery, so the individual glances in that direction.
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Also, another thing to consider is whether there’s other people around and what their gender is. Consider the scenario of me (a man) walking down the street at night and there’s one person around that I need to pass by to get where I’m going.
If I’m constantly moving my head to look around at everything, I’m going to look really shady and make other people worried. I’m just trying to get somewhere, so I’d rather not bother people, which means it’s better to just look ahead and kinda ignore them, and trust that my peripheral vision will pick up any actual threats.
AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 2 weeks ago
Well, a man who scanned the periphery would come across as shifty (“what’s he looking for? is he some kind of voyeur or predator? he’s not staring at that girl’s tits, is he, the creep?”), so looking straight ahead is kind of like keeping one’s hands where everyone can see them. Though granted the absence of likely threats would also have an influence.
BarbecueCowboy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Was going to say nearly the same. We’re conditioned to always fabricate a guise of confidence and the body language you give off ‘scanning the periphery’ comes off as the opposite of that.
Dequei@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Is this Loss?
NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
I wouldn’t be looking at any of that, where’s the smartphone showing dumb memes?
redknight942@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Alright yall, experiment time.
Go bird watching. Or squirrels. Something hard to spot that moves quickly.
Scan the treeline, or instead fixate on a point straight ahead. Do what comes naturally first, then the opposite. What method “spots” the motion first?
See what method works better for you. Hope it helps!
Malfeasant@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I ride a motorcycle… When I was doing the MSF training (after riding illegally for years), I kept getting dinged for not turning my head to look into a turn. Thing is, I have excellent peripheral vision. I can see 90° to either side when I’m looking straight ahead - so I tend to keep my gaze straight ahead regardless of where my attention is…
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
yeah, i got dinged on my driver’s test for not turning my head to look. because my eyes can rotate in their sockets, something the examiner did not consider.
thejoker954@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Its been years since I took the course, but I believe one of the reasons for turning your head into a turn is “balance”. It basically recenters yourself into the turn.
The other is not all helmets are made the same. Some are going to restrict your vision more than others.
OneWomanCreamTeam@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Leaves me wondering if this indicates some kind of biochemical/neurological difference, or just like sociological differences. Like are women processing vision differently from men, or is this happening just because women are more worried about getting attacked.
Fedizen@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Women tend to also process visuals differently. I do think I’ve seen data that show men’s eyes tend to be more sensitive to movement while women tend to have better color recognition on average.
So when women look at dark areas they may see more things there in color, this may create a sort of feedback loop for night time visual behavior in addition to obvious sociological concerns.
ThirdConsul@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
is this happening just because women are more worried about getting attacked.
Uh… It’s complicated, but
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_fear_of_crime
Long story short, the less likely the crime, the more women are afraid of it happening to them.
(And yes, this sentence is very slightly cherry picking data to provoke people to read the wikipedia page).
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Would need to compare it to the same data sampled from different places.
Archangel1313@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
This is what peripheral vision is for.
SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
I thought these were guitar hero screenshots at first
ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 2 weeks ago
That’s why I can never find anything and have to ask my girlfriend for help. I’m bad and scanning the periphery.
nek0d3r@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
We’ll never get better game sense if we don’t keep an eye on our surroundings!!!
kittenzrulz123@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
As a transfem I am always looking for the bear :3
(NV reference)
Crozekiel@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
I’m absolutely flabbergasted that anyone walks anywhere without constantly scanning around them. How do people have the attention span to just look at where they are going and only where they are going??
Hadriscus@jlai.lu 2 weeks ago
What is a BYU study ? DDG returns a mormon thing
bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
I’m not buying that heatmap data. Why are almost all the dots on the left red? That would mean that women pick a random spot and focus on that for an extended period of time before moving on to the next. This is not really how you’d investigate a scene. The right images are much more believable to me: Short glances at random points to get an overview of the scene and then re-investigating points of interest.
I am a man, though. Women: Do you really stare random points into oblivion?
Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Considering how common and easy eye tracking is, this seems like some shitty science.
AppleTea@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
whaaaat surely BYU, the school that claimed to have done cold fusion, is an upstanding pillar of academic research
Gork@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
This would be the perfect use case for that fancy Apple VR headset they released a year or two so. Since it has built-in eye tracking, it would be easy to set up a test in a controlled environment where participants navigate it while looking around.
WizardofFrobozz@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Shitty science at BYU? Surely not!
wedge@multiverse.soulism.net 2 weeks ago
Study designed around a conclusion using a borderline invalid method.
III@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I feel like utilizing eye tracking would be used if they were to study this concept more deeply. That data would be more complicated to sift through given how much data and how many variables might come into play. Definitely more telling but also harder to analyze.
FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Seems like a seriously flawed study, doezn’t it, asking people to point to what’s interesting is NOT AT ALL the same as tracking their eyes.
We could actually track their eye movement by using special glasses. Just call your study what it actually is, ffs… don’t confuse the data.
DarkCloud@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
…also, it has to do with attention on photos rather than real world going home experiences.
III@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
In the article they note that they participants were shown photos and told to click on areas that caught their attention. The results show that women paid more attention to the periphery. No eye tracking, no long focus.
Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
As a woman, imagining situations like those: I can see the brightly lit center is empty, that’s all I need to know about it. The stairs require several glances especially if I’m in heels or other unstable shoes. But those dark corners need checking and rechecking the whole time I’m walking, to be sure no tiny changes betray a lurker. Who is probably going to wait until they’re at my back to make a move.
My mental image of the guys scanning the same image: “Yeah that’s where I’m going, that’s obviously where I’m looking.” Sure, they could get mugged but it’s less likely, and physical threat isn’t on their mind.
endless_nameless@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Hope you don’t see this as me just trying to stir shit cause I’m not. It just really irks me to see that sentiment repeated even though it’s entirely unsubstantiated. I’m a man of small stature and a minority. With awareness of the reality of the situation, the threat of physical violence is literally always on my mind. I’ve had a solid handful of random encounters in public that very nearly turned violent and it causes me pretty severe anxiety.
Don’t know why I felt like typing a novel over this, like I said though I guess I just find it frustrating. I can’t talk to my female friends about this, they just laugh at me. They talk about it like I’m wholly immune to violence by virtue of being male when it couldn’t be further from the truth.
bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
My point wasn’t that women aren’t looking at the surroundings, but that they don’t do it as is portrayed in the image. You said it yourself: “checking and rechecking the whole time” That doesn’t match singular hotspots, but rather a more spread-out heatmap with peaks at certain positions.
nednobbins@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
I was mugged in the playground of my building, the street across fine my house, my lobby, and at 57th and suttton, all in Manhattan. Then a few more times when I lived in Baltimore. I really hope most women don’t get raped that often.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
they picked a location on campus widely known among the student body for people getting raped. i was warned as a freshman during orientation not to go there after dark.
sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Um. Holy shit. How does a known place on campus not get corrected immediately.
pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Isn’t it like a video game, where you look to where people might be hiding?
Fmstrat@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
To your edit: The dots do make sense.
This is an overlay of every participant. So if 100 women clicked in the same 10 places, for instance, they would be red. While places 50 women clicked would be yellow.
Also, even if this was eye tracking of one person, it could still make sense. Red != 100%. Red is the place where the most time was spent looking. So of 1s was spent on all the dots, and everywhere else was less than 1s, then red. Comparing it to the male chart is what makes it seem off, but the comparison of color doesn’t matter, it’s the math.
sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
I think their question was why would all the women click the same ten random places rather than spread the heat map out more broadly along the dark area?
Cethin@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Yeah, what this data actually shows is that, in the situations tested, women tend to find darker areas of a picture more interesting and men tend to find lighter areas more interesting. Not as interesting of a headline though. I’m interested to see what the actual paper says, not some click bait pop-sci meme.