Do people have a tendency to walk in particular directions?

A: The answer to this strange question is a stranger ‘yes’. When people walk freely in an open space, they often begin to move in a counter-clockwise circle. While scientists believed people were simply following those in front of them or reacting to boundaries, a new study in Nature Communications has found a biological bias to turn in that direction.

The researchers conducted experiments in Spain and Japan, observing groups of adults, teenagers, and nursery school children. They found that the tendency to move counter-clockwise exists even when a person is walking alone in an empty arena and social norms, such as whether a country drives on the right or the left, didn’t change the pattern. The preference also didn’t depend on whether one was left- or right-handed and whether they had a ‘dominant’ eye.

The children displayed the preference in the most pronounced manner, which suggested the preference could be an intrinsic part of human locomotion.

Given the possible presence of a natural biological preference for certain walking patterns, the study’s authors said architects could design more efficient public spaces, like airports and stadiums, that work with people’s natural instincts.

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