Study visually captures a hard truth: Walking home at night is not the same for women
Study visually captures a hard truth: Walking home at night is not the same for women
An eye-catching new study shows just how different the experience of walking home at night is for women versus men.
An eye-catching new study shows just how different the experience of walking home at night is for women versus men.
The study, led by Brigham Young University public health professor Robbie Chaney, provides 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.
Interesting.
I'm certain there are very real differences between men and women in this regard, but the methodology feels like it reduces the quality of the data.
It would have been nice if the researchers could have used eye tracking to see where people were actually looking, rather than asking them to click on what drew their attention. There's surely at least some difference between what people are actually doing, versus what they self-report as doing when asked about it.
I felt the same. Or better yet, why don't they film participants in real life walking outside at night and tracking eyeballs and heartbeats and other metrics.
I thought that too, but being at night and unsociable hours makes it a more difficult study to perform, and also difficult to control the conditions. So I can accept the desire to simulate it in a lab setting.
Perhaps ideal would have been a VR experience of walking in a nighttime location, which could have done the eye tracking (VR headsets can do that) and also would be identical every time.
I second that. Fear has a lot to do with subconscious and fast reactions without actually thinking about that. Having them point and click basically burns all that spontaneous part of the equation.
Just from looking at the result pictures, one could also derive that women can't focus on goals ;-)
The first time I realized something like this exists is when I told one of my female friends that I like to walk around my neighborhood at night, with music in my earbuds, often high. She thought I was crazy for doing this and at first I had no idea why.
This was pretty eye opening for me. I think most men have no idea how different world can look to women sometimes.
What would really interest me is the alignment of perceived and actual threat. This is of course anecdotal and highly localized, but in my bubble men walk home carelessly, while women often express fear. At the same time I know quite a few cases of men getting into trouble, but hardly any women who had anything worse than catcalling happen to them.
Of course it's hard to operationalize mugging and rape into a point scale, but maybe there are other ways for comparison.
You seem to be suggesting that
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in your experience careless walkers get into trouble more than careful walkers
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therefore careful walkers do not face as much of a threat
Do you see the problem with that line of reasoning? It's a bit like saying locked cars get stolen less therefore they didn't need to be locked.
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In most Western countries, men are statistically more likely to become victims of violence than women. That's probably also true for crimes at night in public.
What if women just look around at more stuff than their goal in general and not just walking home?
I wasn't aware of the science of this, but I know to not let a woman walk home at night by herself, regardless of what she is to me.
Oh it’s unique to their experience huh? Ever met a combat veteran?
No, but the fact that women have to operate with the same level of constant vigilance associated with PTSD in combat veterans is perhaps not exactly a good thing.
I'm not a combat vet but I typically scan my surroundings if walking at night and don't use phones/headphones specifically so as not to appear as "distracted and therefore a target."
Guess I should start shopping for estrogen, funny way to find this out about myself, who knew all it takes to be a woman is situational awareness and men are physically incapable of it.