Spanish scientists discovered the trend and sought to find out what it means. Only age seems to influence this mysterious effect: children have a stronger inclination to do it (even with their eyes covered).
A study in Nature Communications on the 10th concluded that humans have a spontaneous tendency to walk counterclockwise when moving without a defined route.
The discovery, made by researchers at the University of Navarra, came about almost by chance, during the Covid-19 pandemic, when the team was analyzing ways of circulating in closed spaces that would allow maintaining a safe distance, says .
When reviewing recordings of these trials, the scientists noticed an unexpected pattern: when several people shared the same space, the movements tended to organize themselves into a leftward rotation.
Based on this observation, they decided to carry out new experiments with individual pedestrians and small groups, in controlled environments and without marked routes. The result was repeated: when walking freely, participants revealed a measurable preference for movement in a counterclockwise direction.
According to Iñaki Echeverría Huarte, from the University of Navarra, this behavior can appear in everyday situations. Just ask someone to start walking in an empty room, a museum, or a supermarket and there is a significant probability that the trajectory will drift in that direction.
To see whether the phenomenon could be linked to cultural factors, the researchers collaborated with Claudio Feliciani of the University of Tokyo and repeated the experiments in Japan. The results were similar to those obtained in Spaineven after considering elements such as sex, dominant hand, dominant foot or dominant eye of the participants.
Age was the only factor in which a relevant difference emerged. According to Feliciani, children seem to have a stronger inclination to move against the clock, which suggests that age may influence the intensity of the effect, making it more or less evident throughout life.
Despite having confirmed the existence of the pattern, Scientists still don’t know what its cause is. Possible visual, biomechanical and body coordination explanations were analyzed, but none allowed the phenomenon to be fully clarified. Tests carried out with one of the eyes covered indicate, for example, that the origin will not simply be in the vision.
The discovery could have practical applications in the design of museums, supermarkets, stores, railway stations or evacuation plans. Small individual tendencies, when multiplied by many people in the same space, can influence the way a crowd moves.
