Dr. Luca Tommasi and Daniele Marzoli from the University “Gabriele d’Annunzio” in Chieti, Italy, have recently undertaken a series of studies looking at ear preference in communication between people.
One of the best known asymmetries in humans is the right ear dominance for listening to verbal stimuli, which is believed to reflect the brain’s left hemisphere bias for processing verbal communication. The studies undertaken by Tommasi & Marzoli basically confirm this in a non-laboratory situation but also go a little further to indicate that not only to people lean toward listening with their right ear, they are also more likely to do what is asked when the message is via the right ear.
In the actual study, or rather the third study, the researchers randomly asked clubbers for a cigarette in either the right or left ear – with significantly more of those asked in the right ear actually giving the researcher a cigarette.
So what does this mean for retail environments? Well, consider the main flow of traffic through your store. Think about maybe having verbal communications (ads, store messages, staff approaching customers) from the customer’s right. It could just increase the chance of someone a) listening and b) acting on what you’re saying.
And lets say you’re an airport and you need to give verbal instructions to passengers, say to board the plane now. The study suggests that if those instructions come from the passenger’s right, then they’re more likely to be responded to naturally without inducing additional stress of going against the natural inclination, and they’re more likely to be followed.
Marzoli et al. Side biases in humans (Homo sapiens): three ecological studies on hemispheric asymmetries. Naturwissenschaften, 2009
