“YOU’VE HAD A MAN LOOK!” Is this a real thing? Alissa Tonkin (Year 10) Science Faculty, The Illawarra Grammar School, Western Avenue, Mangerton, 2500 Abstract Males, especially throughout their teenage years, are not as observant as females. In this experiment male’s observatory skills were compared to females through a timed ‘Where’s Wally’ test. Twelve males and twelve females were asked to locate Wally, where their observation skills to locate Wally were averaged to test the hypothesis that males will take a longer time to locate Wally than females. The study found out that females were almost three times slower than males when it came to locating wally, further proving that the theory of a man look is not reliable.
Introduction A common stereotype in society is that females are more observant then males. An example of this is when someone says ‘Your having a Man Look’, which refers to a person looking for something and not being able to find it because they do not look for it properly. Often, whatever they are looking for is right in front of them. This is referred to as ‘a man look; as often in society, men are seen to not pay as much attention to detail, causing them to miss things that are right in front of them. While no previous studies have been conducted to investigate male’s observatory skills compared to females, a similar study conducted by Krystnell Storr explains “Why Women are Faster to Mature than Males”. The study found that the human brain undergoes major changes anatomically and functionally as we age, and these changes make the connections in our brain more efficient. Storr’s research found that this process tends to happen at an earlier age for women than men, which may explain why some women seem to mature faster than men.
In this study, male’s observation skills were examined and compared to females to discover if gender is a factor in ones observational abilities. It is hypothesised that males will take a larger amount of time to locate Wally in a “Where’s Wally Now?” book compared to females. Method Twenty-four subjects (twelve male and twelve females), within an age bracket of 15 – 16, were asked to locate Wally in a “Where’s Wally Now?” book. Their time was recorded with a stopwatch and recorded in a table. Results The time it took to locate Wally was longer for females than it was males. While the time it took for females to locate Wally was almost three times larger than males, females would observe more objects throughout the test than males, for example Wally’s sister and dog. This suggests that females pay more attention to detail then males, and males only complete the task they were set out to do.
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