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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,

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Speaker 1: it's Christian Sager here. Do you want to beat the

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Speaker 1: lines during your next theme park outing? When you enter

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Speaker 1: the theme park? Just turn right. It's incredibly simple advice,

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Speaker 1: But experts say you'll avoid the longest lines because most

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Speaker 1: people tend to instinctively veer to the left upon entering.

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Speaker 1: If you go right, you'll be going against the grain

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Speaker 1: and against the intent of the amusement park designers. But

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Speaker 1: do most people tend to walk in a clockwise direction

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Speaker 1: in other situations. It's an intriguing question, especially since it's

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Speaker 1: common practice for runners to move counterclockwise on athletic tracks.

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Speaker 1: The same counterclockwise action goes for horse and car races

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Speaker 1: and for baseball players running the basis. There is even

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Speaker 1: evidence that the chariot races at ancient rome Circus Maximus

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Speaker 1: ran counterclockwise too. To test the idea that a person

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Speaker 1: right or left handedness influences their directional preferences, researchers studied

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Speaker 1: the use of dominant hands. But they found, according to

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Speaker 1: the results published by the Association for Psychological Science, is

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Speaker 1: that lefties prefer the left side and right he's like

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Speaker 1: the right Now this may not sound astounding, but the

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Speaker 1: way these tendencies manifest offers clues into our clockwise counterclockwise behaviors.

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Speaker 1: Scientists studied the reaction of stroke patients who had lost

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Speaker 1: the use of their dominant hand. Over time, the patients

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Speaker 1: reversed their natural bias and associated the good side of

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Speaker 1: objects spatially speaking with the side they were forced to use.

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Speaker 1: Scientists studied other groups who were artificially forced to use

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Speaker 1: their non dominant hand and found similar results. Right handed

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Speaker 1: participants who used their left hand to sort dominoes almost

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Speaker 1: immediately showed a lefty bias when identifying the good side

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Speaker 1: of an object. A number of theories address why these

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Speaker 1: directional habits began, but it's continuation has everything to do

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Speaker 1: with predictability. People move in predictable patterns, and for the

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Speaker 1: most part, this is a good thing. Take driving a car,

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Speaker 1: for example. If automobile drivers didn't move in a way

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Speaker 1: that other drivers expected, chaos would erupt and many situations,

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Speaker 1: including four waste stops, would become accident zones. Some researchers

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Speaker 1: also point to the rotational patterns in nature, such as

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Speaker 1: the clockwise migration patterns of elephant herds, penguins, and most

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Speaker 1: songbird species often, say researchers, this migration is guided by

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Speaker 1: wind and weather patterns that help herds conserve energy, or

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Speaker 1: by solar pathways that shape their movements, and it's not

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Speaker 1: so different for us humans. Today's episode was written by

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Speaker 1: Lori L. Dove, produced by Dylan fag And. For more

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Speaker 1: on this and other topics, please visit us at how

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Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com m