Saw this interesting piece on the BBC site today. It discusses research which indicates that you’re more likely to get a positive response, when asking for something, if you speak into the someone’s right ear. It also highlights that, given the choice, the majority of people will use their right ear for listening to the phone, or when holding a conversation in a noisey environment, like a night club.
In some senses this news shouldn’t come as a surprise; the left side of the brain processes input from the right ear, and is the side of the brain which tends to be focused more on interpreting speech and language, and, apparently, also tends to be more ammenable to requests.
The studies mentioned in the article don’t seem to use the kinds of sample sets one might hope for, in order to produce truly significant results, but the indications do seem to be that if you’re trying to blag a fag in a night club, you’re more likely to get one if you ask people in their right ear.
Tags: Science, Weird stuff