Effects of walker gender and observer gender on biological motion walking direction discrimination

Abstract

The ability to recognize the movements of other biological entities, such as whether a person is walking toward you, is essential for survival and social interaction. Previous studies have shown that the visual system is particularly sensitive to approaching biological motion. In this study, we examined whether the gender of walkers and observers influenced the walking direction discrimination of approaching point-light walkers in fine granularity. The observers were presented a walker who walked in different directions and were asked to quickly judge the walking direction (left or right). The results showed that the observers demonstrated worse direction discrimination when the walker was depicted as male than when the walker was depicted as female, probably because the observers tended to perceive the male walkers as walking straight ahead. Intriguingly, male observers performed better than female observers at judging the walking directions of female walkers but not those of male walkers, a result indicating perceptual advantage with evolutionary significance. These findings provide strong evidence that the gender of walkers and observers modulates biological motion perception and that an adaptive perceptual mechanism exists in the visual system to facilitate the survival of social organisms.

Estimations of biological motion walking direction are affected by observer and walker genders

“…Another interesting finding is that the reference repulsion bias was lower for male PLWs than female PLWs. On one hand, the results indicate that the directions in the range of [-90°, 90°] were more biased towards the facing-toward direction (0°) for male PLWs than female PLWs, which is consistent with previous studies that found male PLWs showed stronger facing-towards bias than female PLWs [18,35,52]. On the other hand, the finding indicates that the direction estimates of male PLWs are more accurate than those of female PLWs.…”

“…In other work, Yang et al (2014) found that the discrimination of the PLW motion direction (left vs. right) was more difficult when the PLW was depicted as male (right panel in Figure 4) than when it was depicted as female (left panel in Figure 4) [35]. Furthermore, male participants exhibited greater sensitivity than female participants when discriminating the female PLW's motion direction.…”

“…Moreover, we discovered that neither the gender of the PLW nor the gender of the observer affected the serial dependence. Yang et al (2014) found that the discrimination sensitivity of female PLW was lower than that of male PLW [35]. Hence, it can be proposed that female PLWs may be more dynamic than male PLWs.…”

“…Hence, this explanation does not make sense. Another explanation can be that male observers are more sensitive to motion stimuli than female observers [35,[57][58][59], resulting in higher estimation accuracy for males than females. Therefore, the reference repulsion bias was smaller for males than females.…”

Sex and gender affect the social brain: Beyond simplicity

“…Schouten and colleagues () interpreted this finding such that “if the facing bias reflects an adaptation to the higher cost of misinterpreting an approaching person, misinterpreting the approach of a female figure might be less of a risk than misjudging the approach of a more dangerous male figure” (p. 1259). However, it has also been reported that male observers perform better at judging the walking directions (approaching/retreating) of female walkers, which may reflect evolutionary significance of the opposite gender appearance (Yang et al, ).…”