Requests to the Right Ear Are More Successful Than to the Left

[kpete]

Requests to the Right Ear Are More Successful Than to the Left

* By Alexis Madrigal Email Author
* June 23, 2009

.............

You’re in a loud and sweaty Italian dance club when a woman approaches you. To be heard over the techno, she leans in close and yells into your ear, “Hai una sigaretta?”

If she spoke into your right ear, you would be twice as likely to give her a cigarette than if she asked by your left ear, according to a new study that employed this methodology in the clubs of Pescara, Italy. Of 88 clubbers who were approached on the right, 34 let the researcher bum a smoke, compared with 17 of 88 whom she approached on the left.

“The present work is one of the few studies demonstrating the natural expression of hemispheric asymmetries, showing their effect in everyday human behavior,” write psychologists Daniele Marzoli and Luca Tommasi of the University G. d’Annunzio in Italy.

It’s the latest in a series of studies that show that sound from both human ears is processed differently within the brain. Researchers have noted that humans tend to have a preference for listening to verbal input with their right ears and that given stimulus in both ears, they’ll privilege the syllables that went into the right ear. Brain scientists hypothesize that the right ear auditory stream receives precedence in the left hemisphere of the brain, where the bulk of linguistic processing is carried out.

more:
(this may explain alot?!?, kp)
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/06/earcigarette/

[NYC_SKP]

1. True in the Northern Hemisphere, in the Southern Hemisphere it's reversed.

I always wanted to start a myth, now's my chance.

Maybe it's even true! :P

[KittyWampus]

2. excellent attempt! I wonder if this is cross-cultural. And then if this is pan-species.

[TahitiNut]

3. This may explain some marital relationships ... which side of the bed do YOU sleep on??

Which of your partner's ears do YOU speak into?

[Arkansas Granny]

4. That would make perfect sense for anyone speaking to me. I can't hear much

of anything in my left ear.

[The2ndWheel]

5. That's not very fair for the left ear

Universal verbal input preferences!