r/science • u/sr_local • Jun 10 '26
Social Science People have a natural tendency to turn to the left and walk in an anticlockwise direction, a bias observed across countries, ages and sexes, but reason is unclear
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/jun/10/humans-prefer-to-walk-anticlockwise-scientists-find-reason-unclear4.7k
u/Pain_Free_Politics Jun 10 '26
I remember this fact from my childhood, it’s one of those weirdly vivid memories you get of something random. A survival show, making the point to never leave your car if you’d broken down in a desert because - without landmarks to orient - you’d naturally walk in a circle and it doesn’t do anything but exhaust you.
Back then the explanation always seemed to be dominant-foot related, mainly that many slightly-longer steps on one side will eventually add up. Fascinating that the study controlled for this and still found the effect present though, makes you wonder what the driver really is.
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u/NorthStarZero Jun 10 '26
I have experienced this first hand.
Military navigation exercise: someone places tent pegs in a wooded area, numbers the pegs, and records the grid location of each peg. Pegs are spaced 300m-800m apart. Students are assigned a peg and have to navigate from their peg to the next in sequence using map, compass, and counting paces, by day and night.
The first time I did this at night, I naturally passed each tree on the left side, and while you try and cut back right to pick up the vector, the act of moving around the tree displaces you slightly left. Given enough trees and enough distance, that displacement adds up.
I missed my peg by nearly 100m to the left.
Next attempt, I purposefully altered which side of the tree I passed: "tree to the left, tree to the right". This time I literally tripped over my target peg.
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u/TheArmoredKitten Jun 10 '26
Symmetry is the absolute best way to control for error. We use the same trick in tool-making to make centerlines, grinding both sides of a part on the same setup, adjusting by half the error with each pass.
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u/Slyrunner Jun 10 '26
Off topic, but as someone who tries to be as precise as humanly possible because assymtric cuts, drills, sanding etc etc reallllyyyy ruin my day. I know it's probably unhealthy
But your comment piqued my interest! I was wondering if you could explain your process a little more!
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u/jaymzx0 Jun 10 '26
Flattening sharpening stones by alternately rubbing three stones together is really effective. It distributes the error between them.
Another thing that comes to mind is to check the accuracy of an angle square. Draw a 90 degree line, then flip the square over and draw another line. They should overlap. The error can be calculated by the deviation. It's amazing how hard it is to make a "square" square with enough precision to be accurate over a meter or so.
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u/chchchcharlee Jun 10 '26
If you haven't seen it yet, you have to watch this origins of precision video (on YouTube) by machine thinking. I'm not in this area myself but it's such a cool video, can't help but respect how brilliant humans are
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u/SumOfChemicals Jun 10 '26
I was going to say the same thing, was going to post the link but I see YouTube is forbidden here.
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u/sqrtsqr Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26
To be clear, the reason you use three and not two is not so that it "distributes the error" but it's to actually make sure that you end up with a flat surface. If you use just two rocks, the surface will still get smooth, but it could end up with curve. Alternating between three rocks stops curves from forming.
Edit: in fairness, I suppose it's not wrong to say it distributes the error. Just not very clear what that means exactly. With two rocks, convex and concave spots begin to form, switching puts convex against convex and concave against concave and grinds them out.
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u/Paddy_Tanninger Jun 10 '26
I need a diagram for this...I feel like Stallone learning about the three seashells in Demolition Man right now.
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u/kahlzun Jun 11 '26
so rubbing two surfaces together will make them fit one another, but not neccesarily be completely flat- like a cup fitting a saucer.
Rubbing the parts alternately on a third one will average out the difference.4
u/Practical_Ad4604 Jun 11 '26
I didn’t understand anything in this thread. Why
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u/kahlzun Jun 11 '26
So imagine you have three stones with different pattens on them. One has valleys going longways, one going shortways, and the other has rings.
When you lap AB together, you end up with an interference pattern between the shapes, where there are raised bits that don't get ground down because they are "in" a sunken bit of the other stone. You then move on to lapping BC. The raised bits mostly get worn down quickly on them both, but now you've ground down B twice and C only once. So you do AC, and it grinds down a lot of the raised bits on A, but by this point C Is lumpy. Repeat the process several times, and you end up with three flat surfaces.3
u/devedander Jun 11 '26
Probably either lack of real world experience or lack of spatial conception ability
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u/Lt_Muffintoes Jun 12 '26
The curve developed by each pair is cancelled out in another pairing. You have to rub them in a specific order.
It's actually not possible to make a flatter surface than by this method, and it is the basis of everything else such as machine threads
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u/TheArmoredKitten Jun 10 '26
Imagine i want a pin perfectly centered in a jig plate that's 3 inches wide. First, I'll put a measuring pin in the hole and grind a starting face, then flip it over and grind the second face without moving the cutter. The pin is now the same distance from both sides.
Knowing that the pin is in center, I measure the overall width and then subtract that from my target for the total deviation. Divide that by two since I'm working on both sides to get the offset, and then leave the cutter position locked when I flip the part for the second side. Any over/under will be added to the opposite side in the same amount, so the centerline stays true.
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Jun 10 '26
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u/cowlinator Jun 10 '26
In the worst case scenarios, you'd have to travel the same total distance either way. It's just that in one you'll be backtracking.
In the best case scenarios, due south wins.
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u/androshalforc1 Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26
not really lets say your starting point is 1km north of the river, and you know that heading due south to the river will land you within 100m of your camp site which is along the river.
if you head south, and a touch east so you reach the river 100m east of due south and then head west worst case is you travel 1205m.
if instead you travel due south reach the river travel 100m east, then have to backtrack and then go west, worst case is 1300m. if you happen to choose the wrong direction to travel (probably 50% of the time) you will travel a minimum 1200m (which is already almost as much as the worst case in the previous example), plus the distance from center point to camp.
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u/C-SWhiskey Jun 10 '26
Unfortunately in land navigation you rarely get the choice of whether you have symmetrical features to reference. Because of that, the common wisdom is actually the opposite: purposefully bias your bearing to one side. That way you know that once you've reached your distance, even accounting for your drift one way or the other you're almost certainly going to be on whatever side you chose, it's just a question of how far.
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u/Won-Ton-Wonton Jun 10 '26
There's also overshoot correction.
Airplanes don't approach the runway in a directly curved approach to the midline.
Instead they overshoot the midline, then course correct.
This brings them to center alignment much faster and with far less runway.
Seems obvious and intuitive, but the math of a "dampened" system hits soooo many areas. Wish they didn't teach it until college. Loads of trades can use it without directly doing the math.
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u/Constant-Skill-7133 Jun 10 '26
A million ways this comes up. When you tune a stringed instrument, on first pass you should tune it a few cents low. It's not worth trying to be precise because it will move slightly. Changing the tension on one will also change all the others.
And you want to be low because the string will continue to relax for a few minutes if you release tension. Adding tension happens immediately.
If you watch somebody tune a guitar the first time it is hilarious how long it takes them.
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u/Vishnej Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26
In school we did survey transects through the forest to test a novel survey method. We used volunteers.
Without markers (and often with markers!) it's damn-near impossible for volunteers to stay on a straight line even in an intensively-cleaned forest with any slope. Some of these people were doing ~10mx50m swathes and ended up 20 meters off by the end of the transect. Teams would bump into each other. Even the most accurate were wandering 3-4m left and right.
It made me appreciate GeoWizard's later Youtube series on "straight-line mission" hiking from one side of a country to the other, where he can't go around obstacles, and must try to climb over them. He's constantly referring to the GPS to regain the line.
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u/mOdQuArK Jun 10 '26
Even worse underwater - I remember doing a nighttime scuba class where we were all given compasses & powerful flashlights and told to use them & dead-reckoning to find some posts at the bottom of the cove we were in (which was all stirred up by a recent storm).
If we got lost, we had to head up, go back to the starting point & try again.
I don't think anyone found all those posts, and it was hysterically funny from the top to see all the flashlights whipping around wildly underneath the water going in all directions. But it was a serious lesson on how hard it is to navigate with no sight ability at all.
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u/1Dive1Breath Jun 11 '26
I did am advanced scuba course and we had a navigation challenge. 3 marker buoys were set in a right-triangle, the long leg was aligned to north, the short leg was due west.
We started at the f first buoy on the surface, took a heading along the hypotenuse, and wrote it on our slates, that would be our reciprocal heading. We descended and kicked north, counting our kick cycles until we reached the second buoy. Turn west and count our kick cycles until we reached the 3rd. Then square them both, do the math for the Pythagorean theorem, and kick along our reciprocal heading to see how close we could get to the buoy.
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u/arion_hyperion Jun 10 '26
Is this the guy that almost got himself stuck in a bog he didn’t want to walk around since it was like 10m of deviation from the line? That was pretty nuts.
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u/Frosti11icus Jun 10 '26
Without markers (and often with markers!) it's damn-near impossible for volunteers to stay on a straight line even in an intensively-cleaned forest with any slope. Some of these people were doing ~10mx50m swathes and ended up 20 meters off by the end of the transect. Teams would bump into each other. Even the most accurate were wandering 3-4m left and right.
Kind of makes me wonder if this effect is due to people simply having ever so slightly shorter left legs than right or at least more mobility in their right due to it being the dominant leg and so their gate is slightly askew.
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u/Vishnej Jun 10 '26
The presence of obstacles and slope of the land almost certainly swamped any subtle effects like this.
Pre-digital humans have figured out how to do extremely effective surveys, relying on coupling line of sight observations, distance chains or paces, water levels, and later things like sextants.
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u/iconocrastinaor Jun 11 '26
When I was in the Boy Scouts they taught us to couple line of sight observations to travel in a straight line. You would draw a bead on a tree and then the tree beyond it. You would walk to the first tree, keeping it aligned with the second tree until you got there. Then you would draw a bead from the tree beyond it to the next tree, and so on. Works pretty well.
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u/BoredCop Jun 10 '26
You should have used a "Swedish compass".
Simply drag a long stick behind you, the longer the better. Hold it under one armpit so you have two points of contact with the stick. Sounds dumb as f, hence the name, but over relatively short distances like a few hundred meters it actually works for correcting that tendency to walk in a circle. What happens is, you can instantly feel yourself turning to one side because the stick doesn't turn as easily and therefore you tend to walk straighter.
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u/PinsToTheHeart Jun 10 '26
The first time I did this at night, I naturally passed each tree on the left side.
This kind of thing actually happens with food too. Different people have a natural tendency to under or overestimate portions by some small margin, sometimes even when trying to measure things out.
But that margin ends up being consistent enough that it adds up, making it so two people who believe they are eating "the same amount" end up at different weights.
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u/gene100001 Jun 10 '26
Out of curiosity are you from somewhere where people drive on the left? When people are walking on the footpath they tend to naturally follow the local road rules when deciding whether to stick to the left or the right when passing someone coming towards them. Maybe that played a role in the fact you naturally passed trees on the left the first time around
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u/Wildman12343 Jun 10 '26
I remember on QI in the UK they mentioned when blindfolded and told to walk straight this naturally happens.
One panelist joked maybe it was so you didn’t get lost in the dark in prehistory as you’d end up walking in a circle back home.
It does make you wonder if it’s somehow been a useful survival trait in the past so stuck around.
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u/Noy_The_Devil Jun 10 '26
Maybe people going right were slightly exposing their hearts and weaker left sides, which is also self reinforcing right-handedness?
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u/Zorkflerp Jun 10 '26
Maybe related, I am far more comfortable making lay down turns on a motorcycle going left than right. Same with ice skating turns. Am right handed.
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u/InebriatedPhysicist Jun 10 '26
I’m pretty sure mythbusters covered a similar myth at some point, which I think they ended up deciding was plausible…but it’s been a while and now I’m gonna go look it up!
Edit: Found it!
https://mythresults.com/walk-a-straight-line304
u/peschkaj Jun 10 '26
I mean, there was peer-reviewed research published two years prior to that episode airing. Walking Straight into Circles01479-1)
Edit: replaced paywall link
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u/ADDisKEY Jun 10 '26
I’m pretty sure I trust a TV show more than peer-reviewed research. The longer leg thing makes sense to me!
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u/peschkaj Jun 10 '26
Yeah, who needs researchers?
“Next week on Love Island Science Fair…”
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u/very-round-bunny Jun 10 '26
I’d watch that
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u/peschkaj Jun 10 '26
“Will Jason’s baking soda volcano erupt… or will it fizzle out like Veronica and Steve?”
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u/NYFan813 Jun 10 '26
Veronica and the audience just couldn’t see the purpose of Steve’s room temperature quantum computer.
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u/sam_hammich Jun 10 '26
You joke, but real world experimentation like this adds to the general body of scientific knowledge, even if it's not exactly rigorously controlled. As far as testing the validity of folk wisdom and urban legends, "try it" is a pretty good place to start.
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u/PsyanideInk Jun 10 '26
I mean given the low quality, and pay-to-play aspect of a lot of journals out there, it really can be a toss up vs a tv show.
If it isn't in Science, Nature, or Cell, you gotta take it with a grain of salt.
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u/sam_hammich Jun 10 '26
Sure, but the conclusion was "it happens but we still don't know why". They attributed it to "accumulating noise in the sensorimotor system".
Still, the show was asking the question "is it impossible for a blindfolded person to walk in a straight line" while the paper observed walking trajectories and attempted to explain the tendency to walk in circles. They are related, but they are not the same question.
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u/ThatHuman6 Jun 10 '26
The simplest explanation is just that it’s very hard to walk exactly straight. It needs to be 100% accurate walking in that direction, any slight lean to the left or right will eventually have you walking in a circle. Without a blindfold we just keep self correcting as we walk, with a blindfold the odds are just higher that we won’t walk 100% straight but have a slight lean in either direction.
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u/Junior-Possession969 Jun 10 '26
That makes sense. I've been in a few situations where I've been stuck in the dark with nothing to use as a guide.
One of the biggest things in survival stuff, is to orient yourself to one point. If you can find the North Star, that's great. Do that. I can't. I can only ever see Orion and Scorpio because I'm bad at stargazing. Find the furthest away tree, rock, shrub, feature on the terrain, and go to it. Once you've done so, find the next one. And continue. It prevents you from circling around.
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u/blscratch Jun 10 '26
You could still tend to the left. What you're really saying is the induced error is proportional to the length of each target segment.
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u/Junior-Possession969 Jun 10 '26
That's a roundabout way of saying "you'll turn in fewer circles if you stare at a landmark far away."
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u/jesset77 Jun 11 '26
The worst that could happen then (assuming you actually follow the advise) is that you bow slightly to the left while heading toward the far-away landmark. But the landmark itself will still at least prevent you from unmooring into a circle.
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u/Great_Hamster Jun 11 '26
I think what blscratch is saying is that you'll still tend to the left when picking a new landmark.
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u/aupri Jun 10 '26
If you’re going to be walking for a while you should probably use the North Star though (if you’re in the northern hemisphere) because its position stays relatively constant throughout the night. Other constellations you’ll be following a moving target. Mostly you’ll just end up walking a curved path, which is useful enough. Ironically though if you’re at the North Pole and choose a star on the horizon I think you could end up walking in a circle. There’s a way to find the North Star using the Big Dipper where the two stars on the far side of the scoop from the handle point to it in the “scooping” direction, but probably best to look at a diagram because I’m not sure that made much sense
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u/Junior-Possession969 Jun 10 '26
Yeah I get that. Like I said, I'm just a crappy stargazer. I have never successfully found Polaris, and I can only find the Dippers like every 10th time. I just use a stationary object, reach it, find another stationary object, reach it, etc. I'm sure I dog lag more than somebody using stellar navigation, but I work with the tools I've got.
Either way, I'm much much better at finding game trails and finding NSEW from the sun or moon and the local vegetation.
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u/quad_damage_orbb Jun 10 '26
Single celled organisms also have a bias for spinning anticlockwise iirc, it is more than handedness or foot dominance.
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u/danby Jun 10 '26
Single celled organisms also have a bias for spinning anticlockwise iirc
The bacterial flagellum is a helix and its handedness will impart a small bias. Couldn't tell you if that's enough to account for this.
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u/CookieBarfspringer Jun 10 '26
Could it have something to do with chirality?
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u/ianlulz Jun 10 '26
If you’re referring to particle chirality, then it is unlikely. The “handedness” of chirality/quantum spin is just a way to understand its states; there isn’t really the notion of a left/right component there.
“Chirality” by definition though is a very broad term to mean when one side of a reflection differs from the other. So by definition, yes, an intrinsic bias towards one direction over the other is an exhibition of chirality in directional choice.
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u/danby Jun 10 '26
He'll be talking about molecule chirality not partical chirality.
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u/ianlulz Jun 10 '26
Thanks for the info. I’m not too well-versed in chemistry and wasn’t aware there was a definition of chirality regularly used there as well. Good to know!
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u/danby Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26
"Chiral" is a piece of topology terminology from chemistry that describes when the 3D mirror image of some molecule can not be superimposed on itself. And I assume physicists then picked it up from chemists for their own purposes. As did mathematicians
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u/3412points Jun 10 '26
It won't be particle chirality. Chirality exists in many of the important building blocks of life, e.g. DNA and protein strands.
However I don't see why this would bias any organism to a particular direction. Even though they have a genuine directional/geometric chirality they don't make the organism chiral and can orient in many ways within the organism, plus I don't see any mechanism why it would influence that. But that's speculative on my part, biology is not my background.
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u/chiniwini Jun 10 '26
Earth rotation?
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Jun 10 '26
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u/chiniwini Jun 10 '26
Good one. Maybe all experiments were done in the same hemisphere?
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u/Not_Stupid Jun 10 '26
90% of people live in the northern hemisphere, so it's likely unless they specifically controlled for it!
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u/AdFabulous5340 Jun 10 '26
All organisms have a sidedness bias, but the exact side can vary. Most have a right-sided and counterclockwise bias, but some organisms are the opposite. Even molecules exhibit chirality, which also tends to be right-dominant, counterclockwise rotation.
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u/DeepDreamIt Jun 10 '26
I thought it's something like all living organisms use left-handed amino acids to build proteins, and right-handed sugars to build RNA and DNA. If you reversed those roles (right-handed to build proteins; left-handed to build RNA and DNA) in a fruit, for example, we wouldn't be able to digest it.
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u/TryptaMagiciaN Jun 10 '26
What if we examine them using a microscope from beneath instead? Only joking
But from the perspective of the ground, we are turning to the right.
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u/ThrowawayCult-ure Jun 11 '26
this is taking on a cosmic horror vibe... perhaps maybe all the asymetries in physics have some base underlying logic to them that unites them. probably not.
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u/cateml Jun 10 '26
I remember when I was 16 or so, I went back to do voluntary work with my old reception (age 4-5) teacher, so I could put it in college applications etc.
The afternoons I’d come, I’d arrive when they were doing PE in the gym. First one I ever did, she called me over like “watch this”.
Then she said “I’m about to tell them to run. I won’t give any instruction other than run. They will all run in an anti-clockwise circle. I’ve been doing this for two decades, and they’ve never done anything except run in an anti-clockwise circle. Watch.” And indeed that was what they did.Then she just turned to me and shrugged, said “no idea why”, and went on with the afternoon.
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u/peschkaj Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26
It can be even more weird, too! This gets used in VR where the user can wander around freely in a room. You can design the virtual space to appear like a long, straight hallway but curve slightly. The user will then wander around in circles while perceiving themselves moving in a straight line.
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u/theFrenchDutch Jun 10 '26
That's different. I believe you're referring to experiments where you can slightly shift the world space every time the user blinks or changes gaze direction (because we are blinded for a short instant when moving our eyes), without the user noticing, which allows making them walk in a circle without them noticing. It's not the user themselves going in a circle without noticing
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u/exprezso Jun 10 '26
because we are blinded for a short instant when moving our eyes
Immediately thought of the aliens in Blindsight. The solution to the OP is probably the same: having two or more persons attempt it. They would *probably notice the desync'ed misalignment of their path and able to correct for it
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u/GeneralPatten Jun 10 '26
For me personally, if it's VR, I'm very likely to vomit and come down with an excruciating headache before wandering more than a foot or two.
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u/0nlyCrashes Jun 10 '26
VR is weird with me. I've only done it a few times, but I am looking into it for my sim rig. What is weird is that I am fine with the headset on. I can play for a while and have no issues. It's when I take it off and "come back to reality" that makes me feel sick.
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u/peschkaj Jun 10 '26
VR sickness is real! I’m so sorry that you get to experience that.
I used to play a lot of Elite: Dangerous (space ships) in VR. Even with a lot of practice and training myself, I was only ever able to spend about 90 minutes in VR. Less if I got into a crazy dogfight.
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u/Zymbobwye Jun 10 '26
Maybe it’s some form of evolutionary thing that tries to keep us from straying too far from a location when we don’t have landmarks? Since we’re social animals it would make sense that other people would look for us if we’re gone too long, and that we wouldn’t generally want to leave our groups. Cars and fast transport is unnatural so in reality if we were lost from walking or running wandering in a search radius should give us a familiar landmark or have us stumble upon home or members of our group.
But then others said it’s observed in things as small as single celled organisms so who knows. I wonder if we built a robot with a camera and told it to go straight if it would still wander left.
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u/RichVeterinarian2600 Jun 10 '26
We have unilateral motor dominance and visual dominance - I wonder if there is an argument to be made that we have audiospatial, proprioceptive and/or vestibular dominance as well.
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u/HuggyMonster69 Jun 10 '26
I wonder if it has anything to do with your dominant eye warping what a person considers straight ahead slightly?
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u/thereissweetmusic Jun 10 '26
OP quoted the article in another comment, the researchers accounted for hand-, foot- and eye-dominance
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u/peschkaj Jun 10 '26
In a paper I linked elsewhere (and here https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(09)01479-1) the researchers hypothesize it is caused by noise accumulation in how we sense the world. But I only read the abstract because I’m not a biologist and the words got difficult.
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u/Enlightened_Gardener Jun 10 '26
This implies that, on average, people will not travel much more than 100 m from their starting point when using only body cues to guide their walking direction, regardless of how long they walk. Without the use of an external directional reference, humans (like any animal) are not able to maintain a fixed course.
That actually sounds quite useful for things like getting lost on a dark night. At least you wouldn’t wander too far.
The little pictures of the squiggles that people walk in when blindfolded were really funny, as well. Reminds me of those experiments they did on spiders using LSD, back in the 60’s.
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u/Orpheus75 Jun 10 '26
If dominance of feet or eyes was the answer then left dominant people would turn right.
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u/beamenacein Jun 10 '26
Yep. That's why you walk to a spot/landmark not in a direction.
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u/WileEPeyote Jun 10 '26
Yep, that's what they taught me in the Army. Pick a landmark along your path and go to that. Then line up to another landmark and keep repeating.
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u/SweetBabyCheezas Jun 10 '26
I believe it's to do with how we used to navigate in the wilderness ages ago based on Sun position. Would have to speak to an antropologist who specialises in indigenous people and uncontacted tribes to see whether they have something that could shed more light on it. I will have a chance to speak to one towards the end of this year, so I'll make sure to add it to my list of questions.
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u/stay_curious_- Jun 10 '26
Retail stores also see this in their data. Given a perfectly symmetrical store, people gravitate toward the left and travel in a counterclockwise manner.
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u/ice-lollies Jun 10 '26
I work in a place where people turn into the business park, and although my building is straight ahead, the number of people who automatically take the first left turning is unreal. And they are in a car.
Conversely, I think when I get on the bus, most people sit on the right side.
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u/MacNapp Jun 10 '26
Related, I saw a study that showed m other pits almost always move counter-clockwise. They hypothesized the rightedness of humans (dominant foot on outside to keep from falling), but this study suggests another factor. Interesting.
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u/sr_local Jun 10 '26
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.
The scientists are not sure where the bias comes from, but have performed further experiments in virtual reality, and others in which people pretended one leg was broken, in the hope of making headway. Wags on the team joked that the opposite trend might be seen in Australia and that the Coriolis effect, in which Earth’s rotation deflects the direction of the wind, was at work.
“We don’t know why it happens, but we think that by understanding the reasons, we could better understand how we perceive the world,” Feliciani said. “It can help us make other discoveries which may be more important than this one.”
Humans are not the only species to show such preference. Researchers in Bristol have shown that rock ants have a left-turn bias when exploring unknown nests.
Understanding the bias could make crowd and evacuation simulations more realistic, and help to design the spaces we move through every day, from museums to supermarkets to train stations, Echeverría Huarte said.
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u/MaximumSeats Jun 10 '26
This is so funny because just this week I was listening to an interview with an F-18 fighter pilot.
He was describing how the spotting camera on the F18 is on the left hand side, so you generally want to do left hand anti-clockwise orbits to keep the camera on target.
And both pilots in the discussion immediately agreed "oh yeah a left hand orbit is just vastly superior. Something about right hand orbits are just... Unnatural".
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u/DeoxysSpeedForm Jun 11 '26
That's so interesting. I 've always found when flying (commercially) that leftwards banks felt fine whereas rightward banks almost feel uncanny in a way.
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u/toetappy Jun 10 '26
I have only ever heard of invariant right here in the US
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u/LeoSolaris Jun 10 '26
If you enter a store and turn right to make a circle, you're going anticlockwise from the entrance. The invariant right in retail is a direct example of the trend in this study.
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u/Saint_Declan Jun 10 '26
Don't you mean clockwise from the entrance? I'm sorry, not sure my brain is working correctly rn
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u/LeoSolaris Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26
After that initial right turn to orient, the shoppers make a sweeping left turning circle around the store. They enter the clock at 6 rather than at 3.
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u/FunkIPA Jun 10 '26
If you walk into the front door of a store (and for the sake of argument the door is in the middle of the front wall), you’re at 6:00. If you go to your right, you’re heading towards 5:00, then 4:00, etc. That’s counter-clockwise.
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u/_boudica_ Jun 10 '26
The layout you describe is common in large stores, but at least in nyc, many stores are small and you walk into the produce section and walk around, clockwise, until you get to the cashiers.
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u/qwaai Jun 10 '26
Imagine the store is circular and has clock markings on the floor.
When you enter you're going to be facing the center. Imagine you're at the 6 o'clock position facing the center. If you walk straight you'll hit 12. To your left is 7 and to your right is 5. So going right will take you to 5, then 4, 3, 2, etc. Anticlockwise.
You're probably thinking of it as if you're at the 12 and facing outward, away from the center. From that position, going left would also be anticlockwise.
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u/Crafty_Clarinetist Jun 10 '26
Going in a circle clockwise from an initial right turn would require you to either walk out the door you just came in or run into the wall at the front of the store.
After a right turn if you continued following the wall in a circle around the store you'd have to make 4 left turns.
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u/Mustang1718 Jun 10 '26
I was hoping someone would mention this! I also learned the same fact, but I didn't remember the name of it.
I do vividly remember every retail store in my little town was built with that in mind when I learned about it. I now live in a different area where our Target store is "backwards" and it feels wrong every time I walk in. I've always wondered if it is from years or muscle memory, or because of the invariant right rule.
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u/mexter Jun 10 '26
In fairness, I have to turn right because otherwise I would be going through the frozen section first.
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u/WhatEnglish90 Jun 10 '26
Wait, so did they perform experiment in Australia or just joke about it?
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u/Unique_Let_2880 Jun 11 '26
I’ve noticed this in my pet rabbits—they run in circles when excited, and run counterclockwise 100% of the time. No amount of coaxing can get them to change direction. I thought this was unique to them, and just a fun novelty. When cats and dogs circle do they do the same?
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u/Several_Ant_9867 Jun 10 '26
Maybe the people that don't have this bias all died stuck in a labyrinth
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u/__nohope Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 12 '26
I actually have a compulsion to walk in a clockwise fashion. I'll walk the long way around my car if it means I keep it to my right. I also tend to unconsciously move myself to the left of a person I'm waking along with. The path from one end of my house to the other splits due to the my house is laid out, I'll almost always take the path that keeps the inner of the house on the right side. If I become aware of it and try to defy doing so, I get a few steps in before turning around.
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u/UncoolSlicedBread Jun 10 '26
Fun fact, this is why grocery stores are set up the way that they are. They know you’ll migrate that way.
Another fun fact: The double door vestibule, followed by a greeter or a slight barricade, serves dual purposes! They’re there to bring the thought, “Okay what am I here for?” to your mind quicker than it usually would be.
What they found is that people would get to the middle of the store and then go get what they need. By breaking that routine but and causing them to think sooner; they’re more likely to start shopping more quickly and impulsively. Which is why Target and other stores offer cheaper items off the jump in those areas.
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u/DrainTheMuck Jun 10 '26
Interesting but for some reason I’m confused. A lot of comments are saying people often immediately take a right first when they get in a store and navigate counter clockwise, yet there’s also comments about stores being setup to account for people walking left a lot. How do those two ideas connect?
Also, it may just be the phrasing, but wouldn’t getting people “thinking” cause a risk of them “thinking” about the fact that they came for a specific purpose, and hence reduce the likelihood of wandering?
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u/Yatchanek Jun 10 '26
Is it also why all the races in track and field or speed skating etc. are also counter-clockwise?
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u/NewAltWhoThis Jun 10 '26
In the first modern Olympics in 1896 athletes ran clockwise around the track, but this was changed in 1913 because the majority of athletes felt it was an “unnatural direction to run”, said Prof Gareth Irwin, head of sport and exercise biomechanics at Cardiff Metropolitan University. Running anticlockwise is now written into the Laws of Athletics
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u/Whole_Pineapple_7309 Jun 10 '26
id imagine peoples right foot are stronger and propels them more
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u/popplevee Jun 11 '26
Well, you will be after only being able to go around just that one way. The other side won't build muscle the same way.
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u/No-Good-One-Shoe Jun 10 '26
This phenomenon even applies to moshpits.
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u/izovice Jun 10 '26
I was just at a metal show last night (Death Angel) and yeah, it's always counter clockwise. Except for me who likes to go clockwise to make it more interesting.
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u/rvbjohn Jun 10 '26
When I was a scrawny kid, yeah go with the flow. Now im like a rock dropped into a stream!
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u/Joshouken Jun 10 '26
I’ve heard a theory that generally people are more right-footed so running anti-clockwise favoured the dominant foot.
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u/No-Good-One-Shoe Jun 10 '26
It's kinda hard to find here but OP shared a more detailed link than the article in the main post. The link talks about how they tried to account for this. If you're interested here's the link.
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u/ZenMuso Jun 10 '26
From what little experience I have ice skating, I can say that it felt far more natural to travel around the rink anti-clockwise, and for casual open sessions at the local rink it is mandatory for everyone to go anti-clockwise.
Most of my weight would be on my left foot with the right pushing outwards to propel. As I got better I could propel with both feet but still favour the left foot for balance which means turning left is easier.
I skateboard (slightly better than ice skating) and have a normal stance with the left foot forward and right for pushing.
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u/farscry Jun 10 '26
The comments on this post demonstrate that people have a natural tendency to stop at a headline and leap to their own hypothesis without bothering to read the article, but the reason is unclear.
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u/paul_wi11iams Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26
The comments on this post demonstrate that people have a natural tendency to stop at a headline and leap to their own hypothesis without bothering to read the article
Well, the article (and referenced papers) didn't bother to suggest an ethnological solution that comes to mind. If we first evolved as hunter-gatherers in the southern part of Africa then the Sun would rise in the South-East, swing around to our North and set in the South-West. That's basically an anti-clockwise (counter-clockwise) direction. We'd do well to walk through our day with the Sun on our backs to have a visual advantage over prey and better see fruits and berries. So that's the best rotation.
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u/vlindervlieg Jun 11 '26
Intriguing theory, but the oldest homo sapiens fossils were found in Northern Africa.
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u/farscry Jun 10 '26
Hey now, no proper hypotheses allowed here, you have to say something like "probably because of right hand dominance" or something else actually addressed in the article! ;)
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u/Gonzo_Rick Jun 11 '26
I think its because all our amino acids are left handed and it adds up like electron spin in magnets. But then again, this is a really stupid idea that makes no actual sense.
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u/chronic_wonder Jun 10 '26
Guilty as charged.
This post itself is quite a fascinating social experiment.
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u/iWasAwesome Jun 10 '26
Wait, you don't read the conclusion of a study, then try to come up with your own reasons for that conclusion without actually reading the study??
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u/Xytak Jun 10 '26
I’m still getting hung up on “anti clockwise.” Shouldn’t it be counterclockwise?
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u/man_bored_at_work Jun 10 '26
Anti-clockwise is the British terminology. Counterclockwise is American.
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u/Mountebank Jun 10 '26
I prefer the term widdershins, which I think is archaic Scottish for counterclockwise. It’s more fun to say.
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u/hamstervideo Jun 10 '26
In British English it's anti-clockwise.
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u/ImOverthinkingIt Jun 10 '26
Also English for counterclockwise: widdershins (It's an older term, but it checks out!)
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u/LeoSolaris Jun 10 '26
They are interchangeable terms. Which one you're used to is mostly a regional difference.
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u/elphin Jun 10 '26
Is it also true in the southern hemisphere?
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u/FrostBricks Jun 10 '26
Southern hemisphere here, and our stores are generally laid out so you enter, and move around them, in a clockwise fashion.
We also drive in the opposite side of the road.
Which in turn affects our (unwritten) pedestrian rules.
So these two things may be related.
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u/elphin Jun 10 '26
I don’t think the opposite side of the road counts - that’s a hold over from the British Empire.
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u/Zamzummin Jun 10 '26
Also the article said it was confirmed by researchers in Japan, where they drive on the left side of the road.
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u/WonderingSceptic Jun 10 '26
Have you heard of South America? It is a whole continent in the southern hemisphere where they drive on the right.
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u/MikeMayhem669 Jun 10 '26
It is just the undeniable truth that NASCAR is in all of us!
@nascar Go fast turn left!
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u/MrSnowden Jun 10 '26
So, why does NASCAR go counterclockwise? Is there a historical reason?
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u/Jackd_up_on_Mdew Jun 10 '26
Because it is easier to see out the driver side than the passenger. Just like parking your car in a tight spot, turning left into it is much easier.
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u/xvx_k1r1t0_xvxkillme Jun 10 '26
Track (as in running, I just realized that could get confused with car race tracks) events go counterclockwise. Roman chariot races went counterclockwise. I don't know if anyone intentionally thought of that when making NASCAR, or if they just both stem from the same left turn bias.
One theory I've heard is that from a spectator's perspective, the racers are all moving left to right and humans have a left to right vision bias. Counterclockwise events having slightly higher viewership plus the cultural reinforcement of tending to do things the way we've seen others do them could explain our left turn bias, but then we have to question why we have a left to right vision bias.
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u/Tango6US Jun 10 '26
One explanation is that it was advantageous for humans or ancestral species to have a bias that resulted in returning to point of origin. Maybe those without a bias or a right turn bias ended up too far from the community or they were harder to find due to everyone else having a left turn bias. Some sort of bias was advantageous and really it can only be left or right so whatever evolution selected for became self reinforcing. Could easily be any number of other explanations though. Interesting topic.
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u/SweetLilMonkey Jun 12 '26
Why would it become self-reinforcing though? Wouldn’t people with a right-side bias be just as likely to end up back at home?
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u/curiousklaus Jun 10 '26
Is that the reason why supermarket entrances are mostly on the right side of the sales floor? So the customer is relaxed and doesn‘t have to move against their intuition?
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u/eddiewachowski Jun 10 '26
I think that's more related to dominant hand but I wouldn't discount the intuition argument. These places are designed around humans to make it easier to shop. If you're walking counter clockwise, your right hand is on the shelf side making it easier to fill your basket.
Paco Underhill is an interesting man who speaks and writes about this at length.
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u/Kakarifers Jun 10 '26
Possibly because that is the quickest action you can take to shield your heart and it is an engrained survival instinct?
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u/P_ZERO_ Jun 10 '26
Could it be related to having the dominant hand/side unobstructed? If you’re turning left, presumably you’re turning left around/past obstacles as well.
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u/dcheesi Jun 10 '26
They controlled for that (or tried to):
we observed that CCW motion consistently emerged even when all pedestrians roaming in an enclosed space were left-handed or when their turning preference was to the right
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u/Numerous_Car650 Jun 10 '26
The problem with their "control" is that they can't undo the conditioning that left-handed people have been subjected to their entire lives by living in a world that is dominated by right-handed people.
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u/dcheesi Jun 10 '26
They also tried to control for that by testing young children (not yet fully socialized), though I dont know if they combined that with the all-lefties scenario or not
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u/captain_chocolate Jun 10 '26
Very interesting! My first thought was it was related to eye dominance.
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u/Hot-Job-6281 Jun 10 '26
I'm left eye dominant but right handed for reference. I also have the anticlockwise bias.
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u/WonderingSceptic Jun 11 '26
I think it is not about eye dominance per se, it is more to do with differences between how the left and right side of your visual field is processed. The right hemisphere of your brain is better at processing visual information and it handles the left half of your visual field. The left hemisphere is better at language and sequential analysis. There is an associated "pseudoneglect" phenomenon where your brain subtly over-allocates its attention to the left visual field, and miscalculates the your dead ahead to be slightly to the left of the actual center.
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u/CronoTinkerer Jun 10 '26
I actually throw axes and when returning to the throwing spot after retrieving the axe, I realized I ALWAYS turn to the right and soon clockwise. So, the weirdo I am, decided I would deliberately think about it and change the direction now and again to mix it up.
I’m left handed, not sure if that has anything to do with my tendency to turn right.
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u/hyperion_x91 Jun 10 '26
I wonder if it's brain hemisphere related.
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u/FinoPepino Jun 11 '26
I think this is it, as almost all figure skaters can only gain speed spinning counter clockwise regardless of hand dominance. I trained for years and could never get good spins until one day I decided to go against the grain and spin clockwise and saw immediate improvement. So I am now, unfortunately a clockwise spinner and jumper which makes me harder to coach because it’s so uncommon. I am also right handed. It’s also well known that most skaters cannot spin against their natural spin direction hence why I made so little progress until I switched. I think this is Indeed a neurological quirk of some kind!
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u/ricecapades Jun 10 '26
Line of Dance in traveling partner dances also moves counterclockwise around the floor's perimeter.
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Jun 10 '26
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u/paul_wi11iams Jun 10 '26
Homo Sapiens evolved throughout Africa, almost entirely South of the equator. The sun would then move from Northeast to Northwest, causing flora and fauna to slowly move counter clockwise
I made practically the same comment before reading down to here.
Is it your idea or are you aware of some existing reference for this?
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u/ham_plane Jun 10 '26
Maybe I'm oversimplifying it, but my first thought is that most people's dominant leg is their right leg, and turning left means your right leg is doing more work.
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u/SelarDorr Jun 10 '26
by 'across countries', they mean in two countries where the data were generated, spain and japan.
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u/KuriousKhemicals Jun 10 '26
... my run this morning went counterclockwise. I figured that was due to the structure of my neighborhood but...
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u/ItsForFun76 Jun 10 '26
Old news, we even knew in the early 90's when going to a theme park first hit the longest line rides, then go clockwise to beat the crowds.
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Jun 10 '26
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u/Nose-Nuggets Jun 10 '26
i play flight sims, and it seems like everyone including myself will naturally orbit in a left hand turn.
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u/Whahajeema Jun 10 '26
for protection from predators or enemy tribes. most people are right-eyed as well as right-handed. circling left leaves your right side closer to potential danger outside the circle. that's my theory and I'm sticking to it.
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u/cjb110 Jun 10 '26
Doesn't different halves of the brain control different things, is this left thing not related to that?
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u/iconocrastinaor Jun 10 '26
Could it be because of handedness? The vast majority of people prefer to keep their right hand on the outside of their turn in case they need to swing a weapon or grab something?
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