Heat Maps Show 'Striking' Difference for Women Walking Home Alone at Night

Heat map images to show the different focus points of men and women while imagining themselves walking through different dark scenarios.

As a woman, the peace of a sundown stroll can be very much outweighed by the creeping feeling of being followed or fearing what lurks in the darkness.

More than 50 percent of women in the United States are afraid of walking alone at night, according to Gallup’s 2023 annual crime poll, compared to just 26 percent of men. And thanks to a new study from Brigham Young University, this striking contrast can be seen in a whole new light.

For the study, published in the journal Violence and Gender, 571 participants were asked to look at 16 images from different university campuses. They were then told to imagine themselves walking through each of these areas and asked to click on any areas of the photos that caught their attention using a heat map tool.

“The resulting heat maps represent perhaps what people are thinking or feeling or doing as they are moving through these spaces,” Robbie Chane, the study’s lead author and health professor at Brigham Young University, said in a statement. “Before we started the study, we expected to see some differences, but we didn’t expect to see them so contrasting. It’s really visually striking.”

From these maps, it became clear that men tended to focus on the path in front of them or a fixed object like a light or a garbage can. By contrast, the women focused considerably more on potential hazards in the periphery of the images, like bushes and dark areas off the path.

The researchers hope that their study will spark more awareness and conversations to introduce new measures to support the safety of women and those who feel vulnerable walking home late at night.

“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.”

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