Derek Zoolander, the tragically left-turn-impaired male model from the early aughts satire, may have been more biologically accurate than anyone gave him credit for. A new study from the University of Navarra reveals that when people are left to their own devices - ambling through museums, supermarkets, or even empty rooms - they exhibit a natural tendency to drift counterclockwise.
“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, lead author of the study published in Nature Communications.
The discovery began as a pandemic-era accident. Researchers originally set out to measure how many people could safely share a space while social distancing. Upon reviewing the footage, they noticed the crowds had an uncanny habit of shuffling anticlockwise. This serendipitous observation sparked a full research project, with experiments in enclosed spaces repeatedly confirming the bias - whether individuals or small crowds were involved.
To rule out cultural norms, the team collaborated with Dr. Claudio Feliciani at the University of Tokyo, who found the same results in Japan. The bias persisted even after accounting for right-handedness, right-footedness, and right-eye dominance, and appeared in both male and female walkers. The only notable variation was a more pronounced tendency 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,” Echeverría Huarte explained.
The scientists are still baffled by the cause. They've run experiments in virtual reality and even asked participants to pretend one leg was broken, all in pursuit of an explanation. Some wags on the team joked that the opposite trend might occur in Australia, or that the Coriolis effect - Earth's rotation deflecting wind - might be at play. (Spoiler: It's not.)
“We don’t know why it happens, but we think that by understanding the reasons, we could better understand how we perceive the world,” Feliciani said. “It can help us make other discoveries which may be more important than this one.”
Humans aren't alone in their leftward lean. Researchers in Bristol have observed that rock ants also exhibit a left-turn bias when exploring unknown nests. The suspicion has fallen on biomechanics. “None of us is perfectly symmetrical, and the way each person’s brain gathers sensory information and coordinates it with the muscles seems to tip them gently to one side,” Echeverría Huarte said. “I should be honest, though - we have tested several ideas and the bias stubbornly keeps showing up, so the exact mechanism is still an open question.”
Understanding this quirk could make crowd and evacuation simulations more realistic and help design spaces we move through daily - from museums to supermarkets to train stations. The finding also sheds light on historical athletic norms: in the first modern Olympics in 1896, athletes ran clockwise until 1913, when the majority deemed it “unnatural.” Running anticlockwise is now enshrined in the Laws of Athletics, likely due to right-leg dominance in the population. But Prof. Gareth Irwin of Cardiff Metropolitan University suggests the bias may be less about biomechanics than social dominance: “The idea of right-sided dominance transcends sport and athletics, and can be seen in other areas such as supermarket design.”