I went to Japan with 3 friends, all of us male. The itinerary was public and shared, we made discussions on where we were going each day. In train stations and cities all 3 of them asked me how was it that I didnt need to pause and could just keep walking to our next location. I pointed out the signs with perfectly legible english/romanji. The signage in Japan is great.

I get compliments on my perception, and refer to it as a minor super power of mine, but I think it’s because I’m just constantly looking around.

/signed by someone who is also flabberghasted

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. Movement is often also detectable in the periphery.

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.

The way to test for a visual feedback loop would probably be to evaluate night time driving (or other safer conditions) differences to see if women tend to look more at low light areas.

Alternately you could put men and women out in the woods and see if their behavior aligns.

Would need to compare it to the same data sampled from different places.

is this happening just because women are more worried about getting attacked.

Uh… It’s complicated, but

https://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).

I put the source in the comments: https://news.byu.edu/intellect/study-visually-captures-hard-truth-walking-home-at-night-is-not-the-same-for-women

BYU = Brigham Young University. Famously mormon.

Something Something University?

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Yeah, peripheral is better to detect subtle movement in low contrast areas.

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.

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.

I’m in the same boat. My wife is oblivious most of the time while my head is on a swivel.

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.

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. :)

Makes sense for the school that expels women for being assaulted. As if I needed another reason to hate BYU

Considering how common and easy eye tracking is, this seems like some shitty science.

[researches] asked [participants] to click on areas in the photo that caught their attention.

Then the different-colored dots make even less sense. And why are there fringes?

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.

…also, it has to do with attention on photos rather than real world going home experiences.

I’m not buying that heatmap data.

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.

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.

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.

It’s probably 1 click = blue, right? The more clicks overlap at a certain point the closer to red.

Isn’t it like a video game, where you look to where people might be hiding?

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.

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.