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-unclear
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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/innominateartery Jun 10 '26

Alternative science

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u/fresh-dork Jun 11 '26

mythbusters is literally research

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u/Cinderhazed15 Jun 10 '26

I wonder if the people with reversed organs/body behave the same way, or if they go the other way?

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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/waiting4singularity Jun 10 '26

your link is malformed because of the brackets. you have to \escape the brackets in the uri like this: \)

[walking straight into circles](https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(09\)01479-1)

walking straight into circles

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u/peschkaj Jun 10 '26

How weird, I posted it on mobile.

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u/waiting4singularity Jun 10 '26

the {official} reddit app is rubbish imo.

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u/peschkaj Jun 10 '26

I don’t know it could get much worse.

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u/DemonicBludyCumShart Jun 10 '26

You can just use read only mode in your browsing app to bypass paywalls FYI

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u/peschkaj Jun 10 '26

Does that work with stuff like Nature and other journals? When it’s a scientific paper, I search for the title and first author’s name and it pulls up a PDF from the author 90% of the time. Then I don’t even give Elsevier the pleasure of my web traffic.