Humans Prefer To Walk Anticlockwise, Scientists Find (theguardian.com) 156
fjo3 shares a report from The Guardian: Tests reveal that when people are ambling about, they have a natural tendency to turn to the left and walk in an anticlockwise direction. "If you simply ask someone to start walking, whether they are wandering around a museum, a supermarket, or even an empty room, it is surprisingly likely that they will drift counterclockwise," said Dr Inaki Echeverria Huarte at University of Navarra in Spain.
As with many critical discoveries in science, the revelation owes a debt to serendipity. During the pandemic, the researchers ran experiments to see how many people could share a space while keeping a safe distance. On reviewing the video, they noticed that crowds overwhelmingly walked in an anticlockwise direction. The surprise set in motion an entire research project. The scientists conducted a series of experiments in which individual pedestrians or small crowds roamed around enclosed spaces. Time and again, the researchers observed the tendency to walk in an anticlockwise direction.
Suspecting that cultural norms might play a role, the team joined forces with Dr Claudio Feliciani at the University of Tokyo. He found the same results in Japan. The finding held when the researchers accounted for people being right-handed, right-footed and right-eye dominant, and was seen in both male and female walkers. The only difference they spotted was a more pronounced bias in children. "Each of us carries a small personal bias to turn slightly to one side, and when many people share a space, those tiny biases add up into a net counterclockwise rotation," said Echeverria Huarte. Researchers think the tendency may be tied to biomechanics: people are not perfectly symmetrical, and the way the brain processes sensory information and coordinates muscles may gently tip walkers toward one side. Right-side dominance may also play a role, especially in running, where anticlockwise movement puts more internal force on the right side of the body and may feel more natural to right-leg-dominant athletes.
"We have tested several ideas and the bias stubbornly keeps showing up, so the exact mechanism is still an open question," said Echeverria Huarte.
The findings have been published in Nature Communications.
As with many critical discoveries in science, the revelation owes a debt to serendipity. During the pandemic, the researchers ran experiments to see how many people could share a space while keeping a safe distance. On reviewing the video, they noticed that crowds overwhelmingly walked in an anticlockwise direction. The surprise set in motion an entire research project. The scientists conducted a series of experiments in which individual pedestrians or small crowds roamed around enclosed spaces. Time and again, the researchers observed the tendency to walk in an anticlockwise direction.
Suspecting that cultural norms might play a role, the team joined forces with Dr Claudio Feliciani at the University of Tokyo. He found the same results in Japan. The finding held when the researchers accounted for people being right-handed, right-footed and right-eye dominant, and was seen in both male and female walkers. The only difference they spotted was a more pronounced bias in children. "Each of us carries a small personal bias to turn slightly to one side, and when many people share a space, those tiny biases add up into a net counterclockwise rotation," said Echeverria Huarte. Researchers think the tendency may be tied to biomechanics: people are not perfectly symmetrical, and the way the brain processes sensory information and coordinates muscles may gently tip walkers toward one side. Right-side dominance may also play a role, especially in running, where anticlockwise movement puts more internal force on the right side of the body and may feel more natural to right-leg-dominant athletes.
"We have tested several ideas and the bias stubbornly keeps showing up, so the exact mechanism is still an open question," said Echeverria Huarte.
The findings have been published in Nature Communications.
pretty interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:pretty interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
No, you may actually be correct. If there was a bias for people to be like you they would predominantly assume that people generally prefer to go to the right so they usually turn to the left. Which is the observed phenomena.
So the question is what do people do on their own. Do they explore an empty room clockwise or anticlockwise?
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I don't know about empty rooms, but it's very normal in Britain, if you're walking through a field, to turn left and walk clockwise around the edge of the field. But the problem there is potential for bias because of the area.
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It's well documented that on entering a theme park most people turn right, but that is consistent with this research: turning right on entering a room means that you walk anticlockwise around it.
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But you need a hand on the wall to follow it.
And this leads to an interesting topic: Maze solving. There you have techniques like "keep a hand on the wall and do a 90 degree rotation once you turned 360 degree without finding an exit" for exploring a maze with limited view distance.
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because as we all know, all people are right-handed
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Well...the good, proper normal ones are....
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There is a convention in the UK that you pass people on the right, so that if two people are walking towards each other they both move right and avoid a collision. Fewer and fewer people seem to be aware of it though.
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A quick search shows about 66% of countries pass on the left and the remaining 34% pass on the right. Seems most countries that pass on the right had relations to the British Empire along with Japan and a few others.
Since Britain was experiencing a decent amount of immigration, perhaps most the newcomers were from countries that did things the opposite of the British and haven't yet assimilated in the British way.
That explains why the enlightened (Score:2)
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Actually, the enlightened don't refer to left as "left hand" because they can tell left from right without looking at their hands.
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No. They say "sinister".
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In the UK, one drives cars on the left, but when passing on inland waterways, boats pass to the right.
Maybe it's something to do with self-defense? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think we instinctively turn our dominant side towards the side we think represents a greater security threat. If you're walking alongside a wall, for instance, you will usually feel safer with your left side facing the wall and your right side facing open space. If you're walking in a circle and you think there are more threats from outside the circle than from inside the circle, you'll want to walk counterclockwise so you dominant arm is sticking out of the circle. (Assuming here that the crowd is mostly right-handed).
I don't know if their data supports that idea, but it's a testable idea.
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I'd totally vote on this being it.
On a related note - castles (Score:5, Interesting)
Most (not all) spiral staircases in medieval castles spiral clockwise so attackers coming up the stairs can't use their sword arm - which is normally the right arm - to attack the defenders. Meanwhile defenders coming down the other can use their right arm swing. Of course this may have just made left handed swordsmen rather valuable when storming a castle, who knows.
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"spiral clockwise" has a built in assumption of up and down. Every spiral staircase spirals clockwise...and anti-clockwise.
"Of course this may have just made left handed swordsmen rather valuable when storming a castle, who knows."
Or it may have been of no importance. Once an attack gets to that point the defenses have already broken down.
When my mother was a child, any child who was displayed left-handed traits was considered possessed and had their left hands restrained. That was the 20th century. But
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""spiral clockwise" has a built in assumption of up and down. Every spiral staircase spirals clockwise...and anti-clockwise."
Sorry, no idea what point you're trying to make. The attackers are hardly likely to be coming from above - helicopters had yet to be invented. HTH.
"When my mother was a child, any child who was displayed left-handed traits was considered possessed and had their left hands restrained"
Right, because something that happened in one place in one era dictates what happened everywhere for al
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Most stairwells in large buildings still spiral clockwise.
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Most (not all) spiral staircases in medieval castles spiral clockwise so attackers coming up the stairs can't use their sword arm - which is normally the right arm - to attack the defenders
It seems to me if you are fighting enemies on the spiral stairs inside the castle, you've mostly already lost the battle.
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Most (not all) spiral staircases in medieval castles spiral clockwise so attackers coming up the stairs can't use their sword arm - which is normally the right arm - to attack the defenders.
That myth [triskelepublishing.com] has been debunked [newcastlecastle.co.uk].
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"I don't know if their data supports that idea, but it's a testable idea."
The summary claims that was already considered and rejected.
"Assuming here that the crowd is mostly right-handed"
"The finding held when the researchers accounted for people being right-handed, right-footed and right-eye dominant, and was seen in both male and female walkers."
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Interestingly, though admittedly this is purely my anecdote so take this as such, this translates to driving too. Unknown place, just driving for fun, reach a t-junction and have to choose? To me left = "towards where you know" and right = "going further out". Even if that's not actually the case, that's just how my mind sees it at first glance. Wonder if that's also looked at, and also
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Is that correct?
I'm trained as a righty (born ambi) so my fighting stance is left side out, left arm blocking, right arm striking, initially.
That results in hips and stance angled to my right.
I'm cross-eye dominant so I always second-guess, but I don't remember the other students in martial arts class being different.
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Taken by itself, that observation ("this phenomenon arises from individual behaviour rather than collectively emerging due to pedestrian-pedestrian or pedestrian-boundary interactions") doesn't quite rule out the hypothesis. I'd need to know more.
For example, I don't know how big the "circles" are. If the pedestrians are found to walk in relatively small circles, then they are effectively "patrolling" a small area of space and they know that any new pedestrians (or other threats) are necessarily going to
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The paper is linked at the bottom of the summary. So far, I have found that every point brought up here was already addressed except for one - testing in the Southern Hemisphere.
Did they test for the southern hemisphere? (Score:4, Interesting)
Only in the north hemisphere though (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Only in the north hemisphere though (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, on the equator there's no point in wandering around so they just sit down and eat a banana.
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Does the banana curve to the right or the left?
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And at the poles they just turn 360 degree without walking.
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And, right on the equator, they just bob up and down.
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As in: Why are [an/the/that (you've made it singular)] American's retarded [plural thing____] [so/such/a verb] [descriptive clause]?
i.e. "Why are that American's retarded dogs so very smelly?"
Or were you just trying to be ironic by displaying a lack of g
It depends (Score:2)
I noticed that I prefer to walk / ambulate in clockwise circles in really small, confined spaces. In larger open spaces, I prefer indeed to walk in an anti-clockwise manner.
Left vs right hand (Score:5, Interesting)
I recall that this was discovered a long time ago when sales and marketing people realised that people would tend to turn right after they enter a store. I also seem to recall that this didn't hold true for left-handed people.
It would be interesting to see data from countries that are left-hand traffic. Streams of people in left-hand traffic countries tend to walk on the left side, and tend to move to the left if someone is walking towards them - which tends to be fun when walking about a right-hand traffic country! Though given these results were also tested in Japan, which is left-hand traffic, I'd expect there isn't a difference.
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I know it's not actually true of course, but if faced with an unfamiliar t-junction while driving or perhaps I'm just out on a walk to get some distance in, that's how I think of it.
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Interesting. (Score:2)
When rambling through the British countryside, the standard protocol is to turn left immediately on entry but then walk clockwise around the field. So turning left seems to be fixed, but the direction of preference is determined by when.
Would same hold true when steering vehicles? (Score:2)
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Left or right handed? (Score:2)
I catch myself fitting this study absolutely perfectly, but I am wondering if this is also somehow affected by being dominant left or right handed? Or your dominant eye?
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I don't think this is new (Score:2)
I was taught this in business school in the early 2000s. I don't think this is new - this psychology has influenced retail store design for at a minimum 50+ years, and probably a lot longer.
I would much prefer a study that digs into causation/explanation.
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Seriously, it's intentional. They've said so.
NASCAR (Score:2)
vindicated?
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daydream.
That explains it (Score:2)
At lunch, I go out and walk around to get some exercise. There's one moron who walks on the left side of the sidewalk, into oncoming "traffic". They'll move to the right side as you come at them, but then back to the left side once you pass.
They must have used him in the study.
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This will be true for any "stay right" community, the same rule governs all traffic, not just driving. And some people refuse to even consider rules unless they are compelled, leading to this kind of irritation which I feel every time I encounter this very same moron.
And this clear, observable fact suggests to me that the study presented is unlikely to have good data. Confounding factors are unlikely to be overcome.
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Derek Zoolander is an outlier (Score:2)
Myself, I am an ambiturner
Old news (Score:2)
This surely is old news.
There is an old war movie (I forgot the name) in which a bunch of people get stranded after their plane crash lands in North Africa during WW2. A few of them set out to go "somewhere" in a certain given direction, but eventually stumble onto their own plane again. One of the characters (if I recall correctly, one who did not join the expedition and who possibly is the usual German bad guy) then explains that "humans tend to walk in a wide counterclockwise circle, because their righ
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Mythbusters did it blindfolded. There was only the two of them though. Neither got far in direction of intent. First one curved left, second one curved right. Possibly the second one was attempting to compensate after watching the first.
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Possibly the second one was attempting to compensate after watching the first.
That's what they get for not doing a double-blindfolded study.
Japan A Poor Choice (Score:2)
It's interesting and may ultimately prove to be accurate. But, Japan is a very poor choice for testing this. They drive on the left and are thusly also taught to walk to the left. Left hand walking is their cultural norm.
A better test would be to take right hand drive nation people, blindfold them, and have them walk what they perceive to be a straight line.
Also, don't fail to test southern hemisphere residents.
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"A better test would be to take right hand drive nation people, blindfold them, and have them walk what they perceive to be a straight line."
In no way is that a "better test", or is it even clear what you intend to be testing for.
If you are trying to account for a confounding factor, you do not merely seek to replace it with another population that has an opposite preference. Worse, how does blindfolding help? And what does requiring walking in a straight line tell you about an inclination to turn?
"Japan
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Did you mean counterclockwise? (Score:2)
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Not everybody is a native English speaker.
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Re:Did you mean counterclockwise? (Score:5, Interesting)
Then I saw this was from The Guardian, and suddenly it became clear why the wrong word was used.
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Where the hell did "anticlockwise" come from?
I'm betting on the Minister of Funny Walks.
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The researchers wrote in UK English (lots of pointless u's) and used counter-. It is only The Guardian using anti-, and I don't see any good reason why. Counter- is clearly preferred on both sides of the Atlantic, so why is the US version of a UK tabloid using an
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Ask any AI for the opposite direction of clockwise. Literally none will answer anti-clockwise.
English, Motherfuckers. Do you speak it? (Score:2)
English, Motherfuckers. Do you speak it?
https://www.oed.com/dictionary... [oed.com]
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Counterclockwise = prograde.
Clockwise = retrograde.
Well, on Earth it is [wikipedia.org], it may be different in your solar system.
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And quite frankly, they are not intelligent enough to be doing the job they have. Which stopped being journalism a few years back when they announced they were abandoning journalistic objectivity and that their opinions were facts.
Galactic Federation Species Catalog (Score:2)
if we finally make it into space and come across some kind of multi-species gathering, humanity will be grouped with the Widdershins.
track races also go anti-clockwise (Score:2)
Track races use a counter-clockwise oval, as does Olympic speed skating and just about every track sport. Never quite realized it was a default until this article.
Also not sure how to reconcile with the grocery store 'people default to turning right'. So we default to turning right, except when we wander or compete, so we go left? I think this goes to my default answer for everything, "it's complicated".
They could have just gone to a mall as kids (Score:2)
Seriously? This has been know for decades! (Score:2)
I don't know when this was initially understood but it has been taught in survival training for decades.
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I'm an outlier... (Score:3)
... and it messes up my video game playing.
I don't know that I've performed a rigorous study, but I do find myself going the 'other' direction from everyone else.
That means when I play a game requiring exploration or 'maze solving' that the clues which were obvious to the level designer are often invisible to me, because I turned the wrong direction.
I've noticed the 'not the same' part for a long time. I just don't know which direction I turn by default....cause it's just 'default.'
(BTW, I happen to be left-handed, but the summary seems to say that's not statistically relevant.)
It's not the leg length discrepancy.. (Score:2)
I was thinking maybe it's related to how most of us have a discrepancy in our leg length by a few mm, but it's actually evenly split between left and right legs according to a quick search.
They want to have the sword arm free and ready (Score:2)
This is well known with pilots (Score:3)
The one thing they have noticed though is that in the southern hemisphere of the planet, it tends to go clockwise instead.
Did they take into account...? (Score:2)
Did they take into account that most countries drive on the right? If you're walking the perimeter of a room counterclockwise, it might be because you are staying on the right.
Studying this is a job for the (Score:2)
Minister of Silly Walks [youtube.com]
Australis (Score:5, Interesting)
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They walk clockwise in Australia.
Re:Left leg is marginally smaller in most people (Score:5, Interesting)
If they are truly panicking and not thinking they will turn the steering wheel to the right as that's the stronger arm. That's why countries switched to RHD (right hand drive) instead of the original British way of LHD
Wikpedia reports different interpretations.
1) In the Conestoga wagon, in the absence of a driver bench, the coachman would place himself on the left horse to control the animals with the whip in his right hand. Then the coachman would prefer to drive on the right, to sit closer to the centre of the road and better check the carriages coming in the opposite direction. Therefore Pennsylavnia (origin of this wagon) started using right hand driving in 1792. The wagon became popular in continental Europe, providing incentive for driving to the right. It was not much used in Britain.
2) First motor vehicles had the hand brake outside of the vehicle, to the right side, to be used with the stronger right arm. So the driver seat was on the right. Later manufacturers placed the hand brake in the centre and some also moved the driving seat to the left, to keep the hand brake for the right hand. Then similarly to the horse-drawn wagon, when the driver sits on the left, they prefer to drive on the right of the road.
Many countries swapped to facilitate business with their neighbours, long before individual motor vehicles. Even assuming initial random distribution of left or right, it is enough that one or two big countries to have the same convention for everybody else to follow. And so it happened... By the end of the 18th Century, France drives right due to the popularity of the Conestoga; soon after Napoleon imposes right hand driving in conquered Germany and Netherlands. Neighbour countries chose to swap to right to match this big nucleus.
Belgium swapped in 1899, Austria-Hungary after the empire was split (at end of WW1), Spain did not have a national rule and chose in 1920 to follow France, Portugal followed Spain in 1928. Austria changed under influence of Nazi Germany. Adding that Russia had always been driving to right (a decree of 1752), that's enough momentum for everybody else in Europe (and their colonies) to swap to the right. Except Britain for not having neighbours.
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"The finding held when the researchers accounted for people being right-handed, right-footed and right-eye dominant, and was seen in both male and female walkers."
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That explains a lot. Critical thinking is not your specialty.
BTW, we didn't "invent the concept of time" nor is any "concept of time" "represent by clock going clockwise". Time is observable, we neither invented it nor is it a concept, and "clockwise" is a protocol for clocks to aid in rapid understanding, a protocol that is largely unimportant now. Time is as an "intuitive" "concept" as it gets, humans understood time before they understood language. Our pets understand time. Sadly, you don't.
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Or widdershins?!!
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