A store in the Philadelphia area tried to funnel shoppers to the left upon entering the establishment, but they fought the clockwise movement. Moving the direction that people aren't naturally oriented to move can cause them to interact with their environment in a new way, as may be the case in amusement parks - which aim to create an air of novelty and engagement.īut more than one retailer has learned that application of theory doesn't always work out so well. 'Or alternately, we can use the disruption of making someone turn left to enter a space to cause mild discomfort in order to prepare them for an unusual experience or stimulate them into paying more attention.' Harnessing people's natural movements can 'cause excitement and engagement before even stepping into a space,' she says. 'We can use the understanding that most people walk counterclockwise to place interesting objects in such a way that invites us into spaces,' says Rachel Preston Prinz, a founding director the global architectural design research and development cooperative Archinia. But when entering the field of action from within the circle - walking out of your apartment to take the dog for a walk, and encountering intersections - right directional choices would tend towards tracing a clockwise path. So in sports, where competitors enter the field of play from the outside of a traced circle, a right-directional choice would lead to a counter-clockwise motion. Right-handed participants who used their left hand to sort dominoes almost immediately showed a 'leftie' bias when identifying the 'good' side of an object. Scientists studied other groups who were artificially forced to use their non-dominant hand and found similar results. Over time, the patients reversed their natural bias and associated the 'good' side of objects (spacially speaking) with the side they were forced to use. Scientists studied the reaction of stroke patients who had lost the use of their dominant hand. This may not sound astounding, but the way these tendencies manifest offers clues into our clockwise/counterclockwise behaviors.

What they found, according to the results published by the Association for Psychological Science, is that lefties prefer the left side and righties like the right. To test the idea that a person's right- or left-handedness influences their directional preferences, researchers studied the use of dominant hands.

Whats counter clockwise