Study captures hard truth: Walking home at night is not the same for women | Hacker News Reader

Study captures hard truth: Walking home at night is not the same for women

news.byu.edu

12 pointszzaza14 comments

Or rather, looking at photos of dark places and imagining where you'd look if you walked through them isn't the same for men and women.

I understand that it's much easier to give people photos and have them click on the parts that "draw their attention", but wouldn't it have been much more compelling for the study to have people actually walk somewhere at night with eye-tracking glasses on?

This is also my concern. How transferable is one looking at a photo vs actual scene. And this is from the fundamental limitation of whole field of humanities. They ignore science and experiments and logical thinking.

I once participated in a psychology (under the literature department ironically) experiment done by my friend, for the final year project. I was told to play a video game or simulation, to click everything clickable inside the room. There are electrodes all over my head. I mean ok, just clicking things and done, easy money.

After that

Friend: So you feel guilty when you steal those things right?

Me: Wait what? Is that a thief simulator?

Probably, but likely cost and time prohibitive due to extra equipment, time spent per participant, limited hours to study, and potentially more variables to account for (pedestrians, variations in lighting, …).

Also, would you as a researcher trust randoms to return the highly expensive equipment that is rented out in your name? It adds an additional element of risk. Plus, if a person is directly supervising the ownership of eye tracking glasses (ie, researcher always near participant), then wouldn’t that invalidate the reason for the study (how do people perceive area WALKING ALONE at night)?

Eye tracking gear is pretty cheap I think. All you need is a webcam capable laptop and github account. They could have done this with a video playing instead of a steady photo, so that you can see where the participant would focus on at realtime response. But make sure the experience is immensive like 5 mins long video or so. Also please do temporal analysis instead of averaging everything out. Because one with a normal mind could have figured out some people will be nervous at first looking at those dark places but then feel safe afterwards. You don't see this if you ignore time as a variable.

I was very interested in this when the leading photos implied the use of eye tracking equipment used in the real world. I think those results would be extremely interesting to go over.

Asking people to point out where they focus on some printed out photos is not remotely the same thing, I would not expect similar results.

I tend to be "extremely" situationally aware compared to friends when out on the town or walking home, but I too would have likely pointed to the center of the photo in this test. In the real world I would be scanning my peripheral as well as doing intermittent "Crazy Ivan" checks behind me.

edit: I think studies like this give "science" a bad name when you use words like "capture a hard truth" combined with data that obviously in no way does such a thing as the methodology simply cannot answer the question being asked. To be fair, a lot of this is on science journalism in general.

The only question this study answered is the difference in where men and women click on photos presented to them in a certain context. As much as you try, you will not ignite the fight or flight emotional responses people have when walking into a potentially sketchy situation/area. This low effort "science" getting published and promoted in media is getting rather rote and exhausting lately.

It would be really interesting if they had used a control for gender by also comparing results to something like 1, people of all genders who had experienced some sort of violent encounter while walking at night or 2, people who grew up in relatively violent places.

I historically have lived in relatively more dangerous places, attended a pretty violent high school and, while male and physically fit, am not an intimidating presence. I wonder what my results would look like compared to someone from the suburbs or an nfl linebacker.

The other thing they don't mention at all is that especially with walking and biking, the reality of safety is important, but so is the _perception_ of safety. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's very important in this type of work to handle that distinction explicitly. The quote "Why can’t we live in a world where women don’t have to think about these things?" doesn't really acknowledge that. Random sexual violence on the street is pretty rare compared to in someone's home, dorm room, etc. How much of this fear is driven by Law and Order SVU's cultural impact? A genuine question, not a criticism.

From the images. The women are looking at places where threats can't be, it's a random scan over the entire field of view. The men are focused on areas threats can actually appear.

I didn't get that from the article. Looking at dark areas where someone could be lurking as opposed to being focused on the destination would absolutely say being situationally aware to me.

They are looking at solid walls in that tunnel picture.

Those hotspots on the brick walls indicate low validity of the test I think.

I want to see if there is a supplementary material or something to see more results but

> Data for this study cannot be shared because participants did not consent to public data sharing.

I get it but not every single one of them right? What is the repeatability?

The men looking in generally appropriate places might indicate this is a failure of spatial reasoning on the part of the women.

It may indicate that if women had better spatial reasoning skills they wouldn't be as fearful, as they would know that its unlikely that a predator is hiding in the sky.

I'd like to see female army and police officers results on something like this. I'd bet they'd look in more reasonable places and I'd guess they experience less fear on average.

Dupe of a previously flagged submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39301091

…this is science? Eye tracking software is pretty cheap these days, If anything it was harder to do the study this way. No wonder trust in academia is at an all-time low.

By far it's men who are killed by strangers at night walking home (The same for physical assault)

Sexual assault is women.

Hillary Clinton - "Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat."

A bunch of academics showing students pictures just shows how out of touch universities are. The studies subtitle says it all - "A Reflection of Lived Experience"

As you can see from the study daytime pics have the same pattern as nighttime. Men tight, women wide. I'm not sure I get the point other than women take in more of the surrounds, men are more focused.

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