Humans prefer to walk anticlockwise, scientists find – but reason is unclear

Pedestrians on a crossing in Tokyo. ‘We think that by understanding the reasons, we could better understand how we perceive the world,” Feliciani said. Photograph: Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Pedestrians on a crossing in Tokyo. ‘We think that by understanding the reasons, we could better understand how we perceive the world,” Feliciani said. Photograph: Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP/Getty Images Humans prefer to walk anticlockwise, scientists find – but reason is unclear From Spain to Japan, experiments have repeatedly shown a left-turn bias, but exact mechanic ‘is still an open question’ “I’m not an ambi-turner,” laments Derek Zoolander in the eponymous noughties satire about the world’s hottest male model and his rare catwalk hangup. “It’s a problem I’ve had since I was a baby … I can’t turn left.” Now, research suggests that the fashionista’s career-threatening quirk was even more unusual than previously thought. 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 Iñaki Echeverría 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. View image in fullscreen Tourists inside the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Photograph: Emilio Morenatti/AP 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 Echeverría Huarte. Details are published in Nature Communications . 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 w