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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance.
Now, new research has found that humans, it appears, prefer to turn left or walk anti-clockwise.
And all he had to do was turn left. What do you mean? I'm not an ambi-turner. It's a problem I had since I was a baby. Can't turn left.
OK, the team here clearly looking for any excuse to play a clip from Zoolander on a Friday.
Chapter 2: What recent research reveals about human preferences for turning left?
Brendan Kelly is a professor of psychiatry at Trinity College, Dublin, and he joins me now to try and break down this strange phenomenon. And I have to say, Brendan, it is one of those phenomenon.
As soon as I read about it this morning, I could feel myself and my whole body just leaning to the left and trying to figure out as I walked into the kitchen this morning, was I being pulled in a certain direction? And Ciara, you were being pulled in a certain direction.
You were almost certainly being pulled to the left because this new research confirms what was already kind of known, which is humans have a tendency to turn left or to walk counterclockwise. And they studied this in Spain. They studied it in Japan, where they drive on different sides of the road. They studied it in adults. They studied it in children.
And it is a very consistent tendency, particularly in crowds. We want to go left and our bodies will pull us left if we try to move against it. So how strong is the effect, Brendan? Are we talking about a sort of a preference here or is it something that is really obvious?
Yeah.
Well, look, it's not a huge effect. I mean, nobody ends up helplessly spinning left, unable to stop themselves, like sort of a whirling dervish going left all the time. That we know of, Brendan, that we know of. Look, I'm a psychiatrist. They might come to my attention if this was happening. But across large groups, a preference is seen.
And when you leave people moving in a confined area on their own, they will go left. And this is probably to do with our general asymmetry, the lateralization. Our brains are asymmetric with the right side of the brain involved in spatial awareness and And that might be what is pushing us left because the right side of the brain is interested in what happens on the left.
And that might be turning us or twirling us or twirling you slightly, Ciara, as you went into the kitchen this morning. Now, the study began with observations during the COVID-19 pandemic. So was this something that scientists were actually actively looking at or is it a bit of a happy accident, this discovery? Well, it's a bit of an accident.
Whether it's happy or not is maybe up for question because it was people looking at stuff they wouldn't normally be looking at because during COVID there wasn't an enormous amount to be looking at. Nevertheless, this was known prior to this and not only in humans as well. it is known that many animals have a tendency to the left or to the right, and this appears to be biological in large part.
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