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Researchers Accidentally Discover That Humans Prefer to Turn Counterclockwise. But They Still Have No Idea Why
Key takeaways
- CC-BY-ND If you were asked to stand up and walk in any direction, which way would you go?
- While researching social distancing behaviors during the Covid-19 pandemic, scientists wanted to see how many people could easily walk in an enclosed space while still being apart from each other.
- Writing in a study published this week in the journal Nature Communications, Feliciani and colleagues investigated the matter in both Spain and Japan.
CC-BY-ND If you were asked to stand up and walk in any direction, which way would you go? According to new research, regardless of if you are right-handed or left-handed, you are most likely to turn in a counterclockwise direction—and scientists have no idea why. The tendency came to light in a serendipitous turn of events.
While researching social distancing behaviors during the Covid-19 pandemic, scientists wanted to see how many people could easily walk in an enclosed space while still being apart from each other. When they reviewed their video footage, however, they noticed something peculiar.
“My colleagues realized by chance, that in 32 out of 33 experimental trials, as people moved and turned, they noticeably preferred to turn counterclockwise,” Claudio Feliciani, who studies crowd control at Waseda University in Tokyo, says in a statement. “This was completely unexpected as, at least instinctively, when people walk around randomly, you imagine people turn as their needs suit them with little sign of an overall preference.”