this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2026
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Science Memes

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[–] arcine@jlai.lu 15 points 6 hours ago

New proof that I am indeed a woman just dropped πŸ’…πŸ»

Take that transphobes !

[–] TigerAce@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Guess I'm a woman now. Thanks PTSD. Didn't even get the boobs.

[–] agingelderly@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

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

[–] SethTaylor@lemmy.world 4 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I aggressively look every direction. Mine is 360

[–] Alvaro@lemmy.blahaj.zone 51 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Noted. Attack men from the side, women from the front 😎

[–] tmyakal@infosec.pub 11 points 12 hours 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.

[–] DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 35 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

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

[–] Sunsofold@lemmings.world 3 points 6 hours 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.

[–] Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world 10 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

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. :)

[–] korazail@lemmy.myserv.one 1 points 6 hours 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.

[–] razzazzika@lemmy.zip 6 points 13 hours 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.

[–] WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 27 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Really? I scan the environment too, even check for snipers.

[–] lb_o@lemmy.world 7 points 14 hours ago (1 children)
[–] tja@sh.itjust.works 3 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] dmention7@midwest.social 3 points 9 hours ago

That was clearly not a sniper, but Candlejack making a comeb

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 74 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

that location at BYU specifically is informally known as Rape Hill, so of course the women aren't looking straight ahead

i know i'm very glib and i joke a lot, but i'm deadly serious right now.

[–] VoteNixon2016@lemmy.blahaj.zone 31 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

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

[–] reabsorbthelight@lemmy.world 19 points 22 hours ago (1 children)
[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

He said rape is bad, but also any sex outside of marriage is bad.

So, by his logic, raping a woman is no worse than getting consent if you aren't married.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 13 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

i can give you good reasons or bad reasons i got them all. one of the worst mistakes i made was attending there.

[–] VoteNixon2016@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

In your defense, there's a lot of social pressure to go to BYU within the Mormon church, and most high school kids don't have the experience and knowledge to navigate the official and unofficial propaganda. I just happened to luck out that my parents pushed me not to go to BYU

i like your parents

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.

[–] callyral@pawb.social 98 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I look mostly at the ground to avoid stepping on dog poo.


Edit: looks like the study was not done using eye tracking and was instead done with pictures:

https://news.byu.edu/intellect/study-visually-captures-hard-truth-walking-home-at-night-is-not-the-same-for-women <- news thing

https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/vio.2023.0027 <- paper

Participants were given 16 images and asked to consider walking alone through the place in the picture. Using the Qualtrics heat map tool, they were instructed to imagine themselves walking through these areas and to click on the area(s) of the image that stood out to the most to them.

Source: the research article paper I linked above


Also, even if it was done with some type of eye tracking glasses, if you knew you were taking part in a study, would you be worried about what might happen, in comparison to how worried you are normally? Like I'm not gonna be worried about someone sneaking up on me if I know I'm being observed and more likely to be safe, so naturally I'd be more relaxed. I imagine the same applies for other people.

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[–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 85 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 31 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Based on reaction to images, clicking with a mouse where subjects looked

Could just as easily be a study on how different sexes respond to the same instruction

[–] bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 159 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (19 children)

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?

Edit:

Ok, at first I thought this was actual eye tracking information. However,

[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?

[–] Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 132 points 1 day ago (11 children)

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

[–] AppleTea@lemmy.zip 47 points 1 day ago (5 children)

whaaaat surely BYU, the school that claimed to have done cold fusion, is an upstanding pillar of academic research

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[–] FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world 39 points 1 day ago

[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.

[–] Fmstrat@lemmy.world 1 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

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 5 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

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?

[–] bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Fmstrat@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

Ahh, that's more clear then, sorry!

Heat map images were analyzed using canonical correlation (Rc) to determine the relationship between the two groups; dispersion testing to decipher spatial uniformity within the images; the Structural Similarity Index (SSIM) to characterize the nature of image patterns differences; and, the Breslow–Day Test to specify pattern locations within images.

https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/vio.2023.0027

Basically:

  • n women clicked somewhere on the bush
  • The bush is officially located at coordinates x/y
  • Place heat map point (circle) n times at x/y (the bush)

@sem@piefed.blahaj.zone

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[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 21 points 1 day ago (2 children)

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.

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 β€œit’s not every man” essentially boils down to β€œsure, it’s not every man. But it’s enough of them…”

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.

[–] ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 30 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I don't trust Mormon findings until they are peer reviewed.

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