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Key points
- Researchers found that people in open spaces are more likely to turn toward the left.
- There is also a preference in most people for the left side in spatial vision.
- The visual preference reflects right-left brain differences in visual awareness and attention.
Would someone walking in a large public area, like a park or schoolyard, be more likely to turn toward the left or right? Turning left is more likely, leading people to circle counterclockwise, according to research published in the journal Nature Communications in June
“My colleagues realized by chance that in 32 out of 33 experimental trials, as people moved and turned, they noticeably preferred to turn counterclockwise,” said Claudio Feliciani, a co-author of this study. The prevalence of left-turning was true for right- and left-handers, old and young, with patches over either eye, and in cultures as different as Spain and Japan
“If you simply ask someone to start walking,” study co-author Iñaki Echeverría told The Guardian,“whether they are wandering around a museum, a supermarket, or even an empty room, it is surprisingly likely that they will drift counterclockwise.”
Of course, these tendencies were seen in collective behavior after mathematical analyses, and many individuals differed
Another area in which left-right differences are observed is in vision, especially the known preference for awareness of and attention to the left side of the space ahead. Due to the crossed connections in the brain, the left side of visual space is mainly processed in the opposite, right-sided, cerebral hemisphere. That is true in a majority of people, who are majority right-handed, but not in all
Visual processing is associated with left-right differences in the cerebral cortex. According to the authors of a new study on this phenomenon, Noah Britt and associates of McMaster University (2026), “Human observers have a bias in visual processing toward stimuli in the left visual field, largely due to the hemispheric asymmetry: both the left and right hemispheres are specialized for processing different types of information. The right hemisphere of the brain has been revealed to be primarily responsible for spatial awareness … the orienting of attention … and movement preparation and allocation of attention in space … The contralateral nature of cerebral processing means the right-hemispheric dominance for visual processing and attention is directly associated with biased behaviours toward the left visual field. The leftward bias in visual processing has been revealed in behavioural tasks but also in neuroimaging.”
This leftward bias may vary with seeing objects at different distances. But an intriguing possibility is that this preference or seeing the left side of the space ahead may be related to the collective tendency to walk to the left, or counterclockwise
These observations are not medical advice
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Echeverría-Huarte, C. Feliciani and associates (2026). Individual locomotor bias drives counterclockwise motion in pedestrian crowds.Nature Communications 17, 4869
Britt. N. and associates. Hemispheric asymmetry for visual information in 3D space.Neuroscience and Behavioral Reviews(2026)
Sample, I. Humans prefer to walk anticlockwise, scientists find – but reason is unclear. The Guardian (2026)
