Story perspectives

Crowds Turn Left Universally, Study Says

6/13/2026

Summary

Story summary

Researchers observed that people in crowds turn left, creating a counter-clockwise rotation across varied settings.
Researcher Iñaki Echeverría Huarte and researcher Claudio Feliciani reported the bias in experiments conducted in Spain and Japan, publishing the findings in Nature Communications.
The left-turn bias persisted regardless of participants’ handedness, gender, cultural background, or group size.
Children exhibited the strongest left-turn preference, suggesting a possible biomechanical origin and informing evacuation-route and public-space design.

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Story summary

Researchers observed that people in crowds turn left, creating a counter-clockwise rotation across varied settings.
Researcher Iñaki Echeverría Huarte and researcher Claudio Feliciani reported the bias in experiments conducted in Spain and Japan, publishing the findings in Nature Communications.
The left-turn bias persisted regardless of participants’ handedness, gender, cultural background, or group size.
Children exhibited the strongest left-turn preference, suggesting a possible biomechanical origin and informing evacuation-route and public-space design.