Whatever you call the act of moving against the natural flow of a clock’s hands—counterclockwise or anticlockwise—there’s a decent chance you prefer moving that way too.
According to a new study published in Nature Communications and reported by The New York Times, researchers have found that people across the world, regardless of age and background, all have a natural tendency to drift to the left, a.k.a. moving counterclockwise, when they wander.
The discovery happened almost by accident, as applied physicist Iñaki Echeverría-Huarte of the University of Navarra in Spain was studying how people maintain personal space while walking. He was watching footage of people meandering when he noticed that many participants kept veering left. This sparked a five-year obsession with people walking on the left.
Humans Naturally Drift Left When They Walk, and Scientists Aren’t Totally Sure Why
573 tested participants across multiple experiments later, the researchers found that, yeah, people sure do like veering to the left. No matter the situation, no matter the type of space they were walking through, whether they were young or old, moving in silence or to music, again and again, people kept moving left. About 75-80% of people naturally moved counterclockwise within seconds of starting a walk.
The researchers were quite sure why, but they were very confident that it was happening.
One theory suggests that, since humans aren’t perfectly symmetrical, the tiny differences in the balance of our bodies, combined with our brain processes, coordinate movement in a way that subtly pushes us to one side or the other. As for why it pushes us way more to the left than to the right, it is a mystery.
As usual, this isn’t a cute little finding that exists in a vacuum. The research team says this could have far-reaching implications that could help, for instance, improve evacuation planning or help design better public spaces like museums and supermarkets.
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