Go your own way: Significant new research reveals surprising fact about how humans walk

Left to your own devices? Turns out you’ll probably go left.Whether you’re going for a stroll around the neighborhood while on the phone or killing time before your train arrives, odds are you’re unconsciously veering the same way as just about everyone else.A new study says humans instinctively drift left, or counterclockwise, when we walk — even if no one else is around.Researchers from the University of Navarra observed the surprising leftward lean across hundreds of people in Spain and Japan, finding the instinct held up regardless of age, crowd size or even whether someone was left- or right-handed.“Our findings are highly consistent,” the researchers recently wrote in the journal, Nature Communications.“Regardless of crowd size, boundary effects or laterality traits such as handedness, footedness and eye dominance, counterclockwise motion systematically emerges.”In other words, your feet may have a mind of their own.To reach their conclusion, researchers watched hundreds of volunteers walk around open fields, circular spaces and other areas while cameras and drones tracked where they went.They also studied preschoolers on the playground, watched elementary school kids during recess, and asked college students which direction they thought people naturally walk.Time and time again, people naturally drifted to the left.Even more striking, the same pattern appeared when over 200 people walked alone, suggesting it isn’t something picked up from others but something humans naturally do.“Our results indicate that this symmetry-breaking phenomenon is fundamentally rooted in individual locomotor tendencies,” the researchers wrote.The pattern showed up in Japan as well, despite cultural differences in how pedestrians typically navigate around one another, and it even held true among participants who naturally preferred turning right.Young children displayed an even stronger counterclockwise tendency than adults, hinting that the behavior develops e...