An Online Means of Testing Asymmetries in Seating Preference Reveals a Bias for Airplanes and Theaters

Nicholls, Michael E. R.; Loetscher, Tobias

doi:10.1177/0018720812471680

Cited by 3 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 23 publications

(53 reference statements)

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“…Our naturalistic observation of the classroom seating position of university students revealed a preference for seats on the left side of the classroom, confirming the prediction of a leftward bias derived from Karev’s ( 2000 ) expectancy hypothesis. This finding is complementary to Harms et al’s ( 2014 ) observed preference for seats on the right side of the movie theatre using the same procedure as well as the rightward bias observed for online ticket purchases observed by Nicholls et al ( 2013 ). Additionally, a direct comparison of the seating bias for theatre patrons and classroom students provided further evidence that the differing processing demands of the movie theatre and the classroom resulted in opposite seating biases.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

“…Less obvious examples of behavioral asymmetries can also be observed, including biases to turn to the right when entering a room (Scharine and McBeath, 2002 ), kissing (Barrett et al, 2006 ), presenting the left cheek when posing for a portrait (Nicholls et al, 1999 ), or leaning in with the right ear to hear a conversation in a noisy environment (Marzoli and Tommasi, 2009 ). In addition to these asymmetries, people also exhibit seating asymmetries in movie theatres, airplanes, and classrooms (Farnsworth, 1933 ; Nicholls et al, 2013 ; Harms et al, 2014 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Addressing this issue, two real-world studies have examined the seating behavior of actual theatre patrons. Nicholls et al ( 2013 ) assessed the seating preferences of theatre patrons by counting the number of purchased seats for theatre performances booked through Ticketmaster online. Consistent with the seating chart studies, a rightward seating bias was observed for performances at 50% capacity or below.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Take your seats: leftward asymmetry in classroom seating choice

Harms

Poon

Smith

et al. 2015

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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Despite an overall body symmetry, human behavior is full of examples of asymmetry, from writing or gesturing to kissing and cradling. Prior research has revealed that theatre patrons show a bias towards sitting on the right side of a movie theatre. Two competing theories have attempted to explain this seating asymmetry: one posits that expectation of processing demand drives the bias; the other posits that basic motor asymmetries drive the bias. To test these theories we assessed the real-world classroom seating choices of university students using photographs. A bias for students to choose seats on the left side of the classroom was observed, in contrast to the right side bias observed in theatre seating studies. These results provide evidence in support of a processing-expectation bias.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Take your seats: leftward asymmetry in classroom seating choice

Harms

Poon

Smith

et al. 2015

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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“…Though intriguingly, this behaviour has also been demonstrated in situations that do not appear to involve obstacle avoidance or navigation. For instance, people preferentially select seats towards the right side of an aeroplane rather than the left ([ 28 ] although see [ 29 ]), and the right side of theatre halls [ 29 – 33 ], however this may be dependent on the expected cognitive demands of the situation (see [ 34 ] for discussion of a leftward seating preference in classrooms).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Right-lateralised lane keeping in young and older British drivers

et al. 2018

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Young adults demonstrate a small, but consistent, asymmetry of spatial attention favouring the left side of space (“pseudoneglect”) in laboratory-based tests of perception. Conversely, in more naturalistic environments, behavioural errors towards the right side of space are often observed. In the older population, spatial attention asymmetries are generally diminished, or even reversed to favour the right side of space, but much of this evidence has been gained from lab-based and/or psychophysical testing. In this study we assessed whether spatial biases can be elicited during a simulated driving task, and secondly whether these biases also shift with age, in line with standard lab-based measures. Data from 77 right-handed adults with full UK driving licences (i.e. prior experience of left-lane driving) were analysed: 38 young (mean age = 21.53) and 39 older adults (mean age = 70.38). Each participant undertook 3 tests of visuospatial attention: the landmark task, line bisection task, and a simulated lane-keeping task. We found leftward biases in young adults for the landmark and line bisection tasks, indicative of pseudoneglect, and a mean lane position towards the right of centre. In young adults the leftward landmark task biases were negatively correlated with rightward lane-keeping biases, hinting that a common property of the spatial attention networks may have influenced both tasks. As predicted, older adults showed no group-level spatial asymmetry on the landmark nor the line bisection task, but they maintained a mean rightward lane position, similar to young adults. The 3 tasks were not inter-correlated in the older group. These results suggest that spatial biases in older adults may be elicited more effectively in experiments involving complex behaviour rather than abstract, lab-based measures. More broadly, these results confirm that lateral biases of spatial attention are linked to driving behaviour, and this could prove informative in the development of future vehicle safety and driving technology.

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“…The full methodological details and results of these studies are unfortunately not available. Nicholls, Thomas and Loetscher (2013) surveyed seat booking maps on real websites for 100 different flights and 37 theatre performances, and observed that there was some evidence of a bias to the right in selections for theatres, and stronger evidence of a bias to the left in selection for air travel. Whilst the bias to the right in theatres is broadly consistent with previous work (Karev, 2000;Okubo,2010;Weyers, Milnik, Müller and Pauli, 2006;Harms, Reese & Elias, 2014), the bias to the left in aircraft was a novel finding.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Fly on the right: Lateral preferences when choosing aircraft seats

Darling

Cancemi

Sala

2017

Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain and Cognition

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A small preference has been observed for people to choose seats on the left of aircraft when booking via an online system. Although this is consistent with pseudoneglect-the known leftward bias in perception and representation-rightward preferences have been commonly observed in seating selection tasks in other environments. Additionally, the previous research in aircraft seating was unable to dissociate a bias to one side of the screen from a bias to one side of the cabin of the aircraft. Here, we present a study in which participants were asked to select seats for a range of fictional flights. They demonstrated a preference for seats on the right of the cabin, irrespective of whether the right of the cabin appeared to either the right or the left of the screen, a preference for seats towards the front of the aircraft and a preference to favour window and aisle seats. This suggests, in contrast to previous research, that participants demonstrated a rightward lateral bias to representations of an aircraft. These results may have implications for our understanding of asymmetries in cognition as well as having potentially important practical implications for airlines.

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An Online Means of Testing Asymmetries in Seating Preference Reveals a Bias for Airplanes and Theaters

Cited by 3 publications

References 23 publications

Take your seats: leftward asymmetry in classroom seating choice

Take your seats: leftward asymmetry in classroom seating choice

Right-lateralised lane keeping in young and older British drivers

Fly on the right: Lateral preferences when choosing aircraft seats

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