#collectivemotion — Public Fediverse posts

DATE: June 30, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG

** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------

TITLE: Scientists accidentally discover an inherent human tendency for counterclockwise movement

URL: https://www.psypost.org/scientists-accidentally-discover-an-inherent-human-tendency-for-counterclockwise-movement/

When humans walk freely in open or enclosed spaces, they naturally tend to veer in a counterclockwise direction. This individual bias provides evidence that intrinsic personal tendencies shape how large crowds spontaneously organize themselves. These findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, suggest new ways to understand human movement.

In the study of pedestrian dynamics, scientists observe how large groups of people move together in shared spaces. In crowded areas, people often spontaneously form opposing lanes or alternate like a zipper when passing through a narrow doorway. These patterns are known as emergent behaviors. An emergent behavior occurs when simple actions taken by individuals combine to create a complex, coordinated group pattern without any central leader.

In the past, experts thought these collective crowd patterns arose mainly from social interactions and environmental boundaries. For example, people stepping to the right to avoid a collision might eventually cause an entire group to rotate in a specific direction near a wall. Other theories suggested that learned social habits, such as driving on a particular side of the road, dictate how crowds navigate.

To test these assumptions, an international research team designed experiments to determine if the counterclockwise rotation seen in crowds is a social phenomenon or a built-in individual bias. The research team was led by Iñaki Echeverría Huarte, a researcher in the Department of Physics and Applied Mathematics at the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain. The project included researchers from Waseda University, the University of Tokyo, Shanghai University for Science and Technology, and Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.

Echeverría Huarte noted that the project was a collaborative effort that grew out of years of patient experiments. In fact, the initial discovery happened entirely by chance. “It was entirely serendipitous,” he told PsyPost. “During the COVID-19 pandemic we were running experiments on social distancing, trying to understand how many people could safely share a room, and while analyzing that footage we noticed by chance that people kept walking counterclockwise.”

That unexpected observation became the starting point for everything that followed. To formally study the behavior, the authors conducted their first experiment at the University of Navarra. They recruited 50 adult participants and placed them in a confined circular area with a radius of 5 meters. The participants were instructed to walk randomly for several intervals of about 40 seconds. A camera mounted 10 meters above the area recorded their exact paths at 15 frames per second.

Before the walking trials, the researchers tested whether each person preferred turning to the left or right when facing a wall. They then mixed these individuals into different group sizes and combinations. To track the rotation, the scientists calculated a mathematical score for the collective motion, measuring whether the group favored one direction.

The results showed a persistent counterclockwise rotation across all groups. This happened regardless of the overall group density or the ratio of people who preferred turning right. “If you ask a group of people to walk around freely, with no rules or instructions, they will very likely end up going counterclockwise,” Echeverría Huarte said. He called this a small, playful fact about human behavior that most people have never noticed.

To see if the walls caused this rotation, the authors moved their next experiment to an open space. They observed 107 teenagers, aged 13 to 14 years old, walking freely in a 50 by 60 meter schoolyard. Drones recorded the students from 40 meters above the ground, capturing video at 30 frames per second. The researchers used a custom computer program to track the walking speeds and positions of every student.

Even without physical boundaries to guide their movement, the teenagers consistently rotated in a collective counterclockwise direction. The mathematical distribution of their walking paths matched the results from the enclosed arena. This suggests that interactions with walls or fences are not the primary cause of the rotational bias.

Next, the researchers traveled to Japan to test the collision avoidance theory. In Spain, pedestrians typically step to the right to avoid bumping into someone approaching them. In Japan, pedestrians generally step to the left, which the researchers confirmed through a preliminary picture survey. If stepping aside caused the group rotation, the Japanese participants should have rotated clockwise.

The team recruited 39 adults to walk randomly in a circular enclosure with a radius of 4 meters. The participants wore colored hats to help the tracking software map their exact coordinates. Surprisingly, the Japanese groups also exhibited a consistent counterclockwise rotation. This finding refutes the idea that local collision avoidance maneuvers drive the group movement pattern.

Echeverría Huarte noted that the results repeatedly surprised the research team. “The biggest surprise came in Japan, where road traffic and spontaneous pedestrian lanes go the opposite way to Spain, so we were convinced the rotation would flip there,” Echeverría Huarte said. “When my colleague Claudio Feliciani sent me his first video from Tokyo, my reaction was immediate: ‘No way, this is counterclockwise again.’ Its robustness across cultures is what makes it striking.”

The team also wanted to explore whether learned adult rules influence this behavior. They analyzed pre-existing video data of preschool children running freely during a musical activity in a Japanese nursery school. Since young children under the age of six have not yet fully absorbed adult societal rules, their behavior offers a look at more instinctive movement.

The tracking data showed that the children displayed a highly stable and pronounced counterclockwise motion. In fact, the children moved in a cohesive vortex pattern, completely aligning with one another. This suggests that the counterclockwise walking bias is present long before humans learn complex social rules regarding traffic or pedestrian flow.

To ensure no unspoken social expectations were at play in adults, the scientists surveyed 168 university students in Spain. They showed the students a picture of a circular arena and asked which way they would personally walk. The researchers also asked the students which way they expected others to walk, measuring what behavioral experts call empirical and normative expectations.

The survey results showed no consensus on a counterclockwise social norm. In fact, nearly forty percent of the respondents expected people to walk in a clockwise direction, which directly contradicted the physical experiments. Because the actual physical movements did not match the expectations, the researchers concluded that a conscious social rule is not responsible for the behavior.

Finally, the researchers sought to isolate the behavior completely by testing 209 adults walking alone. Each person walked freely for 60 seconds inside an empty hexagonal enclosure while a camera tracked their individual path. The researchers assessed each participant through physical tests to find their dominant hand, dominant foot, and dominant eye. To test visual influences, they also asked 49 of these participants to walk while wearing a patch over their right eye.

Even when walking entirely alone, the participants showed a strong mathematical preference for counterclockwise movement. The scientists found no statistical differences based on a person’s dominant hand, dominant foot, or dominant eye. Wearing an eye patch also did not change the walking bias. These single-person trials provide evidence that the counterclockwise preference is an inherent individual trait rather than a byproduct of crowd dynamics.

“The deeper one is scientific: for physicists, this reframes how we think about complex systems,” Echeverría Huarte said. “We usually assume that the patterns we see in a crowd emerge from the interactions between its members, but here the collective rotation does not come from the group at all, it comes from a bias each person already carries individually. It shows that some collective patterns may have hidden individual origins we had overlooked.”

As with all research, there are limitations to consider. The sample sizes for individuals with specific traits, such as being left-footed or left-handed, were relatively small. Because of this, minor biological influences on walking direction cannot be completely ruled out by the current data. Additionally, the participants were all healthy children, teenagers, and young adults.

“We can say with confidence that the bias is individual and very robust, but we cannot yet explain its origin,” Echeverría Huarte said. “Our best interpretation points to subtle body asymmetries at the level of the sensorimotor system, though this is not settled.” The sensorimotor system refers to the parts of the brain, nerves, and muscles that work together to process sensory information and control movement. Echeverría Huarte also noted that he would caution against overselling practical applications, which at this stage remain modest.

One should avoid assuming that this counterclockwise bias will dictate behavior in every real-world scenario. In highly structured environments, explicit goals or dense crowding might override this subtle natural tendency. People navigating a crowded train station with visible signage and static obstacles may not exhibit the same looping behavior seen in these empty testing arenas.

“The biggest open question is the origin: why this individual bias exists in the first place,” Echeverría Huarte said. “We are now running virtual reality experiments precisely to isolate locomotion from other cognitive factors and test whether the asymmetry sits in how we sense, integrate or execute movement. Finding the root cause is the next big step.”

As the team continues to investigate the biological roots of human walking patterns, they reflect on the unexpected nature of their initial discovery. “Sometimes the most interesting findings are the ones you were not looking for,” Echeverría Huarte said.

The study, “Individual locomotor bias drives counterclockwise motion in pedestrian crowds,” was authored by Iñaki Echeverría-Huarte, Claudio Feliciani, Zhigang Shi, Katsuhiro Nishinari, Angel Sánchez, Angel Garcimartín, and Iker Zuriguel.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/scientists-accidentally-discover-an-inherent-human-tendency-for-counterclockwise-movement/

-------------------------------------------------

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-------------------------------------------------

#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #counterclockwisebias #pedestriandynamics #emergentbehaviors #crowdbehavior #inherentmovement #sensorimotorsystem #NatureCommunications #spatialnavigation #universalmovementbias #collectivemotion

DATE: June 30, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG

** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------

TITLE: Scientists accidentally discover an inherent human tendency for counterclockwise movement

URL: https://www.psypost.org/scientists-accidentally-discover-an-inherent-human-tendency-for-counterclockwise-movement/

When humans walk freely in open or enclosed spaces, they naturally tend to veer in a counterclockwise direction. This individual bias provides evidence that intrinsic personal tendencies shape how large crowds spontaneously organize themselves. These findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, suggest new ways to understand human movement.

In the study of pedestrian dynamics, scientists observe how large groups of people move together in shared spaces. In crowded areas, people often spontaneously form opposing lanes or alternate like a zipper when passing through a narrow doorway. These patterns are known as emergent behaviors. An emergent behavior occurs when simple actions taken by individuals combine to create a complex, coordinated group pattern without any central leader.

In the past, experts thought these collective crowd patterns arose mainly from social interactions and environmental boundaries. For example, people stepping to the right to avoid a collision might eventually cause an entire group to rotate in a specific direction near a wall. Other theories suggested that learned social habits, such as driving on a particular side of the road, dictate how crowds navigate.

To test these assumptions, an international research team designed experiments to determine if the counterclockwise rotation seen in crowds is a social phenomenon or a built-in individual bias. The research team was led by Iñaki Echeverría Huarte, a researcher in the Department of Physics and Applied Mathematics at the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain. The project included researchers from Waseda University, the University of Tokyo, Shanghai University for Science and Technology, and Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.

Echeverría Huarte noted that the project was a collaborative effort that grew out of years of patient experiments. In fact, the initial discovery happened entirely by chance. “It was entirely serendipitous,” he told PsyPost. “During the COVID-19 pandemic we were running experiments on social distancing, trying to understand how many people could safely share a room, and while analyzing that footage we noticed by chance that people kept walking counterclockwise.”

That unexpected observation became the starting point for everything that followed. To formally study the behavior, the authors conducted their first experiment at the University of Navarra. They recruited 50 adult participants and placed them in a confined circular area with a radius of 5 meters. The participants were instructed to walk randomly for several intervals of about 40 seconds. A camera mounted 10 meters above the area recorded their exact paths at 15 frames per second.

Before the walking trials, the researchers tested whether each person preferred turning to the left or right when facing a wall. They then mixed these individuals into different group sizes and combinations. To track the rotation, the scientists calculated a mathematical score for the collective motion, measuring whether the group favored one direction.

The results showed a persistent counterclockwise rotation across all groups. This happened regardless of the overall group density or the ratio of people who preferred turning right. “If you ask a group of people to walk around freely, with no rules or instructions, they will very likely end up going counterclockwise,” Echeverría Huarte said. He called this a small, playful fact about human behavior that most people have never noticed.

To see if the walls caused this rotation, the authors moved their next experiment to an open space. They observed 107 teenagers, aged 13 to 14 years old, walking freely in a 50 by 60 meter schoolyard. Drones recorded the students from 40 meters above the ground, capturing video at 30 frames per second. The researchers used a custom computer program to track the walking speeds and positions of every student.

Even without physical boundaries to guide their movement, the teenagers consistently rotated in a collective counterclockwise direction. The mathematical distribution of their walking paths matched the results from the enclosed arena. This suggests that interactions with walls or fences are not the primary cause of the rotational bias.

Next, the researchers traveled to Japan to test the collision avoidance theory. In Spain, pedestrians typically step to the right to avoid bumping into someone approaching them. In Japan, pedestrians generally step to the left, which the researchers confirmed through a preliminary picture survey. If stepping aside caused the group rotation, the Japanese participants should have rotated clockwise.

The team recruited 39 adults to walk randomly in a circular enclosure with a radius of 4 meters. The participants wore colored hats to help the tracking software map their exact coordinates. Surprisingly, the Japanese groups also exhibited a consistent counterclockwise rotation. This finding refutes the idea that local collision avoidance maneuvers drive the group movement pattern.

Echeverría Huarte noted that the results repeatedly surprised the research team. “The biggest surprise came in Japan, where road traffic and spontaneous pedestrian lanes go the opposite way to Spain, so we were convinced the rotation would flip there,” Echeverría Huarte said. “When my colleague Claudio Feliciani sent me his first video from Tokyo, my reaction was immediate: ‘No way, this is counterclockwise again.’ Its robustness across cultures is what makes it striking.”

The team also wanted to explore whether learned adult rules influence this behavior. They analyzed pre-existing video data of preschool children running freely during a musical activity in a Japanese nursery school. Since young children under the age of six have not yet fully absorbed adult societal rules, their behavior offers a look at more instinctive movement.

The tracking data showed that the children displayed a highly stable and pronounced counterclockwise motion. In fact, the children moved in a cohesive vortex pattern, completely aligning with one another. This suggests that the counterclockwise walking bias is present long before humans learn complex social rules regarding traffic or pedestrian flow.

To ensure no unspoken social expectations were at play in adults, the scientists surveyed 168 university students in Spain. They showed the students a picture of a circular arena and asked which way they would personally walk. The researchers also asked the students which way they expected others to walk, measuring what behavioral experts call empirical and normative expectations.

The survey results showed no consensus on a counterclockwise social norm. In fact, nearly forty percent of the respondents expected people to walk in a clockwise direction, which directly contradicted the physical experiments. Because the actual physical movements did not match the expectations, the researchers concluded that a conscious social rule is not responsible for the behavior.

Finally, the researchers sought to isolate the behavior completely by testing 209 adults walking alone. Each person walked freely for 60 seconds inside an empty hexagonal enclosure while a camera tracked their individual path. The researchers assessed each participant through physical tests to find their dominant hand, dominant foot, and dominant eye. To test visual influences, they also asked 49 of these participants to walk while wearing a patch over their right eye.

Even when walking entirely alone, the participants showed a strong mathematical preference for counterclockwise movement. The scientists found no statistical differences based on a person’s dominant hand, dominant foot, or dominant eye. Wearing an eye patch also did not change the walking bias. These single-person trials provide evidence that the counterclockwise preference is an inherent individual trait rather than a byproduct of crowd dynamics.

“The deeper one is scientific: for physicists, this reframes how we think about complex systems,” Echeverría Huarte said. “We usually assume that the patterns we see in a crowd emerge from the interactions between its members, but here the collective rotation does not come from the group at all, it comes from a bias each person already carries individually. It shows that some collective patterns may have hidden individual origins we had overlooked.”

As with all research, there are limitations to consider. The sample sizes for individuals with specific traits, such as being left-footed or left-handed, were relatively small. Because of this, minor biological influences on walking direction cannot be completely ruled out by the current data. Additionally, the participants were all healthy children, teenagers, and young adults.

“We can say with confidence that the bias is individual and very robust, but we cannot yet explain its origin,” Echeverría Huarte said. “Our best interpretation points to subtle body asymmetries at the level of the sensorimotor system, though this is not settled.” The sensorimotor system refers to the parts of the brain, nerves, and muscles that work together to process sensory information and control movement. Echeverría Huarte also noted that he would caution against overselling practical applications, which at this stage remain modest.

One should avoid assuming that this counterclockwise bias will dictate behavior in every real-world scenario. In highly structured environments, explicit goals or dense crowding might override this subtle natural tendency. People navigating a crowded train station with visible signage and static obstacles may not exhibit the same looping behavior seen in these empty testing arenas.

“The biggest open question is the origin: why this individual bias exists in the first place,” Echeverría Huarte said. “We are now running virtual reality experiments precisely to isolate locomotion from other cognitive factors and test whether the asymmetry sits in how we sense, integrate or execute movement. Finding the root cause is the next big step.”

As the team continues to investigate the biological roots of human walking patterns, they reflect on the unexpected nature of their initial discovery. “Sometimes the most interesting findings are the ones you were not looking for,” Echeverría Huarte said.

The study, “Individual locomotor bias drives counterclockwise motion in pedestrian crowds,” was authored by Iñaki Echeverría-Huarte, Claudio Feliciani, Zhigang Shi, Katsuhiro Nishinari, Angel Sánchez, Angel Garcimartín, and Iker Zuriguel.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/scientists-accidentally-discover-an-inherent-human-tendency-for-counterclockwise-movement/

-------------------------------------------------

Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org

Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot

-------------------------------------------------

#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #counterclockwisebias #pedestriandynamics #emergentbehaviors #crowdbehavior #inherentmovement #sensorimotorsystem #NatureCommunications #spatialnavigation #universalmovementbias #collectivemotion

DATE: June 30, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG

** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------

TITLE: Scientists accidentally discover an inherent human tendency for counterclockwise movement

URL: https://www.psypost.org/scientists-accidentally-discover-an-inherent-human-tendency-for-counterclockwise-movement/

When humans walk freely in open or enclosed spaces, they naturally tend to veer in a counterclockwise direction. This individual bias provides evidence that intrinsic personal tendencies shape how large crowds spontaneously organize themselves. These findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, suggest new ways to understand human movement.

In the study of pedestrian dynamics, scientists observe how large groups of people move together in shared spaces. In crowded areas, people often spontaneously form opposing lanes or alternate like a zipper when passing through a narrow doorway. These patterns are known as emergent behaviors. An emergent behavior occurs when simple actions taken by individuals combine to create a complex, coordinated group pattern without any central leader.

In the past, experts thought these collective crowd patterns arose mainly from social interactions and environmental boundaries. For example, people stepping to the right to avoid a collision might eventually cause an entire group to rotate in a specific direction near a wall. Other theories suggested that learned social habits, such as driving on a particular side of the road, dictate how crowds navigate.

To test these assumptions, an international research team designed experiments to determine if the counterclockwise rotation seen in crowds is a social phenomenon or a built-in individual bias. The research team was led by Iñaki Echeverría Huarte, a researcher in the Department of Physics and Applied Mathematics at the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain. The project included researchers from Waseda University, the University of Tokyo, Shanghai University for Science and Technology, and Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.

Echeverría Huarte noted that the project was a collaborative effort that grew out of years of patient experiments. In fact, the initial discovery happened entirely by chance. “It was entirely serendipitous,” he told PsyPost. “During the COVID-19 pandemic we were running experiments on social distancing, trying to understand how many people could safely share a room, and while analyzing that footage we noticed by chance that people kept walking counterclockwise.”

That unexpected observation became the starting point for everything that followed. To formally study the behavior, the authors conducted their first experiment at the University of Navarra. They recruited 50 adult participants and placed them in a confined circular area with a radius of 5 meters. The participants were instructed to walk randomly for several intervals of about 40 seconds. A camera mounted 10 meters above the area recorded their exact paths at 15 frames per second.

Before the walking trials, the researchers tested whether each person preferred turning to the left or right when facing a wall. They then mixed these individuals into different group sizes and combinations. To track the rotation, the scientists calculated a mathematical score for the collective motion, measuring whether the group favored one direction.

The results showed a persistent counterclockwise rotation across all groups. This happened regardless of the overall group density or the ratio of people who preferred turning right. “If you ask a group of people to walk around freely, with no rules or instructions, they will very likely end up going counterclockwise,” Echeverría Huarte said. He called this a small, playful fact about human behavior that most people have never noticed.

To see if the walls caused this rotation, the authors moved their next experiment to an open space. They observed 107 teenagers, aged 13 to 14 years old, walking freely in a 50 by 60 meter schoolyard. Drones recorded the students from 40 meters above the ground, capturing video at 30 frames per second. The researchers used a custom computer program to track the walking speeds and positions of every student.

Even without physical boundaries to guide their movement, the teenagers consistently rotated in a collective counterclockwise direction. The mathematical distribution of their walking paths matched the results from the enclosed arena. This suggests that interactions with walls or fences are not the primary cause of the rotational bias.

Next, the researchers traveled to Japan to test the collision avoidance theory. In Spain, pedestrians typically step to the right to avoid bumping into someone approaching them. In Japan, pedestrians generally step to the left, which the researchers confirmed through a preliminary picture survey. If stepping aside caused the group rotation, the Japanese participants should have rotated clockwise.

The team recruited 39 adults to walk randomly in a circular enclosure with a radius of 4 meters. The participants wore colored hats to help the tracking software map their exact coordinates. Surprisingly, the Japanese groups also exhibited a consistent counterclockwise rotation. This finding refutes the idea that local collision avoidance maneuvers drive the group movement pattern.

Echeverría Huarte noted that the results repeatedly surprised the research team. “The biggest surprise came in Japan, where road traffic and spontaneous pedestrian lanes go the opposite way to Spain, so we were convinced the rotation would flip there,” Echeverría Huarte said. “When my colleague Claudio Feliciani sent me his first video from Tokyo, my reaction was immediate: ‘No way, this is counterclockwise again.’ Its robustness across cultures is what makes it striking.”

The team also wanted to explore whether learned adult rules influence this behavior. They analyzed pre-existing video data of preschool children running freely during a musical activity in a Japanese nursery school. Since young children under the age of six have not yet fully absorbed adult societal rules, their behavior offers a look at more instinctive movement.

The tracking data showed that the children displayed a highly stable and pronounced counterclockwise motion. In fact, the children moved in a cohesive vortex pattern, completely aligning with one another. This suggests that the counterclockwise walking bias is present long before humans learn complex social rules regarding traffic or pedestrian flow.

To ensure no unspoken social expectations were at play in adults, the scientists surveyed 168 university students in Spain. They showed the students a picture of a circular arena and asked which way they would personally walk. The researchers also asked the students which way they expected others to walk, measuring what behavioral experts call empirical and normative expectations.

The survey results showed no consensus on a counterclockwise social norm. In fact, nearly forty percent of the respondents expected people to walk in a clockwise direction, which directly contradicted the physical experiments. Because the actual physical movements did not match the expectations, the researchers concluded that a conscious social rule is not responsible for the behavior.

Finally, the researchers sought to isolate the behavior completely by testing 209 adults walking alone. Each person walked freely for 60 seconds inside an empty hexagonal enclosure while a camera tracked their individual path. The researchers assessed each participant through physical tests to find their dominant hand, dominant foot, and dominant eye. To test visual influences, they also asked 49 of these participants to walk while wearing a patch over their right eye.

Even when walking entirely alone, the participants showed a strong mathematical preference for counterclockwise movement. The scientists found no statistical differences based on a person’s dominant hand, dominant foot, or dominant eye. Wearing an eye patch also did not change the walking bias. These single-person trials provide evidence that the counterclockwise preference is an inherent individual trait rather than a byproduct of crowd dynamics.

“The deeper one is scientific: for physicists, this reframes how we think about complex systems,” Echeverría Huarte said. “We usually assume that the patterns we see in a crowd emerge from the interactions between its members, but here the collective rotation does not come from the group at all, it comes from a bias each person already carries individually. It shows that some collective patterns may have hidden individual origins we had overlooked.”

As with all research, there are limitations to consider. The sample sizes for individuals with specific traits, such as being left-footed or left-handed, were relatively small. Because of this, minor biological influences on walking direction cannot be completely ruled out by the current data. Additionally, the participants were all healthy children, teenagers, and young adults.

“We can say with confidence that the bias is individual and very robust, but we cannot yet explain its origin,” Echeverría Huarte said. “Our best interpretation points to subtle body asymmetries at the level of the sensorimotor system, though this is not settled.” The sensorimotor system refers to the parts of the brain, nerves, and muscles that work together to process sensory information and control movement. Echeverría Huarte also noted that he would caution against overselling practical applications, which at this stage remain modest.

One should avoid assuming that this counterclockwise bias will dictate behavior in every real-world scenario. In highly structured environments, explicit goals or dense crowding might override this subtle natural tendency. People navigating a crowded train station with visible signage and static obstacles may not exhibit the same looping behavior seen in these empty testing arenas.

“The biggest open question is the origin: why this individual bias exists in the first place,” Echeverría Huarte said. “We are now running virtual reality experiments precisely to isolate locomotion from other cognitive factors and test whether the asymmetry sits in how we sense, integrate or execute movement. Finding the root cause is the next big step.”

As the team continues to investigate the biological roots of human walking patterns, they reflect on the unexpected nature of their initial discovery. “Sometimes the most interesting findings are the ones you were not looking for,” Echeverría Huarte said.

The study, “Individual locomotor bias drives counterclockwise motion in pedestrian crowds,” was authored by Iñaki Echeverría-Huarte, Claudio Feliciani, Zhigang Shi, Katsuhiro Nishinari, Angel Sánchez, Angel Garcimartín, and Iker Zuriguel.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/scientists-accidentally-discover-an-inherent-human-tendency-for-counterclockwise-movement/

-------------------------------------------------

Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org

Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot

-------------------------------------------------

#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #counterclockwisebias #pedestriandynamics #emergentbehaviors #crowdbehavior #inherentmovement #sensorimotorsystem #NatureCommunications #spatialnavigation #universalmovementbias #collectivemotion

Schooling at Scale

Relatively simple visual and hydrodynamic signals are enough to make digital fish school in ways that resemble living ones. Here, researchers look at what happens when well-behaved schools of fish get too big. The researchers first demonstrate that their schools behave reasonably at one hundred members, either in a schooling configuration or a group milling around a central region.

At one thousand fish, the schools are still reasonably coherent and sensible. But at fifty thousand fish, the picture is drastically different. Neither schooling nor milling groups are able to remain together. They fracture and scatter into smaller groupings. (Video and image credit: H. Hang et al.)

Schooling at Scale

Relatively simple visual and hydrodynamic signals are enough to make digital fish school in ways that resemble living ones. Here, researchers look at what happens when well-behaved schools of fish get too big. The researchers first demonstrate that their schools behave reasonably at one hundred members, either in a schooling configuration or a group milling around a central region.

At one thousand fish, the schools are still reasonably coherent and sensible. But at fifty thousand fish, the picture is drastically different. Neither schooling nor milling groups are able to remain together. They fracture and scatter into smaller groupings. (Video and image credit: H. Hang et al.)

Schooling at Scale

Relatively simple visual and hydrodynamic signals are enough to make digital fish school in ways that resemble living ones. Here, researchers look at what happens when well-behaved schools of fish get too big. The researchers first demonstrate that their schools behave reasonably at one hundred members, either in a schooling configuration or a group milling around a central region.

At one thousand fish, the schools are still reasonably coherent and sensible. But at fifty thousand fish, the picture is drastically different. Neither schooling nor milling groups are able to remain together. They fracture and scatter into smaller groupings. (Video and image credit: H. Hang et al.)

Schooling at Scale

Relatively simple visual and hydrodynamic signals are enough to make digital fish school in ways that resemble living ones. Here, researchers look at what happens when well-behaved schools of fish get too big. The researchers first demonstrate that their schools behave reasonably at one hundred members, either in a schooling configuration or a group milling around a central region.

At one thousand fish, the schools are still reasonably coherent and sensible. But at fifty thousand fish, the picture is drastically different. Neither schooling nor milling groups are able to remain together. They fracture and scatter into smaller groupings. (Video and image credit: H. Hang et al.)

Schooling at Scale

Relatively simple visual and hydrodynamic signals are enough to make digital fish school in ways that resemble living ones. Here, researchers look at what happens when well-behaved schools of fish get too big. The researchers first demonstrate that their schools behave reasonably at one hundred members, either in a schooling configuration or a group milling around a central region.

At one thousand fish, the schools are still reasonably coherent and sensible. But at fifty thousand fish, the picture is drastically different. Neither schooling nor milling groups are able to remain together. They fracture and scatter into smaller groupings. (Video and image credit: H. Hang et al.)

Fluid Flows Break Up Microswimmer Clumps

The field of active matter looks at the collective motion of particles and organisms–how birds flock and fish school. In systems of “dry” squirmers–those that have no hydrodynamic interactions with one another–clumps of squirmers can form with empty spaces in between them. This is known as motility-induced phase separation, or MIPS. Researchers wondered whether microswimmers in a fluid–which do produce hydrodynamic forces that can affect one another–would also show MIPS.

In a new study, researchers show, instead, that hydrodynamic interactions between swimmers will prevent (or destroy) these clumps. Through a combination of theoretical work and simulation, the authors found that translational flows between swimmers swept the swimmers out of clumps as they formed. Rotational flows between swimmers made them able to change direction faster, which also kept stable clumps from forming. (Image and research credit: T. Zhou and J. Brady; via APS)

Fluid Flows Break Up Microswimmer Clumps

The field of active matter looks at the collective motion of particles and organisms–how birds flock and fish school. In systems of “dry” squirmers–those that have no hydrodynamic interactions with one another–clumps of squirmers can form with empty spaces in between them. This is known as motility-induced phase separation, or MIPS. Researchers wondered whether microswimmers in a fluid–which do produce hydrodynamic forces that can affect one another–would also show MIPS.

In a new study, researchers show, instead, that hydrodynamic interactions between swimmers will prevent (or destroy) these clumps. Through a combination of theoretical work and simulation, the authors found that translational flows between swimmers swept the swimmers out of clumps as they formed. Rotational flows between swimmers made them able to change direction faster, which also kept stable clumps from forming. (Image and research credit: T. Zhou and J. Brady; via APS)

Fluid Flows Break Up Microswimmer Clumps

The field of active matter looks at the collective motion of particles and organisms–how birds flock and fish school. In systems of “dry” squirmers–those that have no hydrodynamic interactions with one another–clumps of squirmers can form with empty spaces in between them. This is known as motility-induced phase separation, or MIPS. Researchers wondered whether microswimmers in a fluid–which do produce hydrodynamic forces that can affect one another–would also show MIPS.

In a new study, researchers show, instead, that hydrodynamic interactions between swimmers will prevent (or destroy) these clumps. Through a combination of theoretical work and simulation, the authors found that translational flows between swimmers swept the swimmers out of clumps as they formed. Rotational flows between swimmers made them able to change direction faster, which also kept stable clumps from forming. (Image and research credit: T. Zhou and J. Brady; via APS)

Fluid Flows Break Up Microswimmer Clumps

The field of active matter looks at the collective motion of particles and organisms–how birds flock and fish school. In systems of “dry” squirmers–those that have no hydrodynamic interactions with one another–clumps of squirmers can form with empty spaces in between them. This is known as motility-induced phase separation, or MIPS. Researchers wondered whether microswimmers in a fluid–which do produce hydrodynamic forces that can affect one another–would also show MIPS.

In a new study, researchers show, instead, that hydrodynamic interactions between swimmers will prevent (or destroy) these clumps. Through a combination of theoretical work and simulation, the authors found that translational flows between swimmers swept the swimmers out of clumps as they formed. Rotational flows between swimmers made them able to change direction faster, which also kept stable clumps from forming. (Image and research credit: T. Zhou and J. Brady; via APS)

Fluid Flows Break Up Microswimmer Clumps

The field of active matter looks at the collective motion of particles and organisms–how birds flock and fish school. In systems of “dry” squirmers–those that have no hydrodynamic interactions with one another–clumps of squirmers can form with empty spaces in between them. This is known as motility-induced phase separation, or MIPS. Researchers wondered whether microswimmers in a fluid–which do produce hydrodynamic forces that can affect one another–would also show MIPS.

In a new study, researchers show, instead, that hydrodynamic interactions between swimmers will prevent (or destroy) these clumps. Through a combination of theoretical work and simulation, the authors found that translational flows between swimmers swept the swimmers out of clumps as they formed. Rotational flows between swimmers made them able to change direction faster, which also kept stable clumps from forming. (Image and research credit: T. Zhou and J. Brady; via APS)

The science of how fireflies stay in sync Engineers have uncovered the mathematical rules fireflies follow to sync up their flashes. https://s.faithcollapsing.com/tvptu#biology #biophysics #collective-motion #quorum-sensing #science #swarms

The science of how fireflies stay in sync Engineers have uncovered the mathematical rules fireflies follow to sync up their flashes. https://s.faithcollapsing.com/tvptu#biology #biophysics #collective-motion #quorum-sensing #science #swarms

The science of how fireflies stay in sync Engineers have uncovered the mathematical rules fireflies follow to sync up their flashes. https://s.faithcollapsing.com/tvptu#biology #biophysics #collective-motion #quorum-sensing #science #swarms

The science of how fireflies stay in sync Engineers have uncovered the mathematical rules fireflies follow to sync up their flashes. https://s.faithcollapsing.com/tvptu#biology #biophysics #collective-motion #quorum-sensing #science #swarms

The science of how fireflies stay in sync Engineers have uncovered the mathematical rules fireflies follow to sync up their flashes. https://s.faithcollapsing.com/tvptu#biology #biophysics #collective-motion #quorum-sensing #science #swarms

Konstanz School of Collective Behaviour 2025 (#KSCB2025) continues with keynote talk by Sercan Sayin on #locusts and the behavioural mechanisms governing #CollectiveMotion in #swarming locusts

@cbehav.bsky.social

https://www.exc.uni-konstanz.de/kscb/

Crowd Vortices

The Feast of San Fermín in Pamplona, Spain draws crowds of thousands. Scientists recently published an analysis of the crowd motion in these dense gatherings. The team filmed the crowds at the festival from balconies overlooking the plaza in 2019, 2022, 2023, and 2024. Analyzing the footage, they discovered that at crowd densities above 4 people per square meter, the crowd begins to move in almost imperceptible eddies. In the animation below, lines trace out the path followed by single individuals in the crowd, showing the underlying “vortex.” At the plaza’s highest density — 9 people per square meter — one rotation of the vortex took about 18 seconds.

The team found similar patterns in footage of the crowd at the 2010 Love Parade disaster, in which 21 people died. These patterns aren’t themselves an indicator of an unsafe crowd — none of the studied Pamplona crowds had a problem — but understanding the underlying dynamics should help planners recognize and prevent dangerous crowd behaviors before the start of a stampede. (Image credit: still – San Fermín, animation – Bartolo Lab; research credit: F. Gu et al.; via Nature)

#activeMatter #collectiveMotion #crowds #fluidDynamics #physics #science #vortices

Crowd Vortices

The Feast of San Fermín in Pamplona, Spain draws crowds of thousands. Scientists recently published an analysis of the crowd motion in these dense gatherings. The team filmed the crowds at the festival from balconies overlooking the plaza in 2019, 2022, 2023, and 2024. Analyzing the footage, they discovered that at crowd densities above 4 people per square meter, the crowd begins to move in almost imperceptible eddies. In the animation below, lines trace out the path followed by single individuals in the crowd, showing the underlying “vortex.” At the plaza’s highest density — 9 people per square meter — one rotation of the vortex took about 18 seconds.

The team found similar patterns in footage of the crowd at the 2010 Love Parade disaster, in which 21 people died. These patterns aren’t themselves an indicator of an unsafe crowd — none of the studied Pamplona crowds had a problem — but understanding the underlying dynamics should help planners recognize and prevent dangerous crowd behaviors before the start of a stampede. (Image credit: still – San Fermín, animation – Bartolo Lab; research credit: F. Gu et al.; via Nature)

#activeMatter #collectiveMotion #crowds #fluidDynamics #physics #science #vortices

Crowd Vortices

The Feast of San Fermín in Pamplona, Spain draws crowds of thousands. Scientists recently published an analysis of the crowd motion in these dense gatherings. The team filmed the crowds at the festival from balconies overlooking the plaza in 2019, 2022, 2023, and 2024. Analyzing the footage, they discovered that at crowd densities above 4 people per square meter, the crowd begins to move in almost imperceptible eddies. In the animation below, lines trace out the path followed by single individuals in the crowd, showing the underlying “vortex.” At the plaza’s highest density — 9 people per square meter — one rotation of the vortex took about 18 seconds.

The team found similar patterns in footage of the crowd at the 2010 Love Parade disaster, in which 21 people died. These patterns aren’t themselves an indicator of an unsafe crowd — none of the studied Pamplona crowds had a problem — but understanding the underlying dynamics should help planners recognize and prevent dangerous crowd behaviors before the start of a stampede. (Image credit: still – San Fermín, animation – Bartolo Lab; research credit: F. Gu et al.; via Nature)

#activeMatter #collectiveMotion #crowds #fluidDynamics #physics #science #vortices

Crowd Vortices

The Feast of San Fermín in Pamplona, Spain draws crowds of thousands. Scientists recently published an analysis of the crowd motion in these dense gatherings. The team filmed the crowds at the festival from balconies overlooking the plaza in 2019, 2022, 2023, and 2024. Analyzing the footage, they discovered that at crowd densities above 4 people per square meter, the crowd begins to move in almost imperceptible eddies. In the animation below, lines trace out the path followed by single individuals in the crowd, showing the underlying “vortex.” At the plaza’s highest density — 9 people per square meter — one rotation of the vortex took about 18 seconds.

The team found similar patterns in footage of the crowd at the 2010 Love Parade disaster, in which 21 people died. These patterns aren’t themselves an indicator of an unsafe crowd — none of the studied Pamplona crowds had a problem — but understanding the underlying dynamics should help planners recognize and prevent dangerous crowd behaviors before the start of a stampede. (Image credit: still – San Fermín, animation – Bartolo Lab; research credit: F. Gu et al.; via Nature)

#activeMatter #collectiveMotion #crowds #fluidDynamics #physics #science #vortices

Crowd Vortices

The Feast of San Fermín in Pamplona, Spain draws crowds of thousands. Scientists recently published an analysis of the crowd motion in these dense gatherings. The team filmed the crowds at the festival from balconies overlooking the plaza in 2019, 2022, 2023, and 2024. Analyzing the footage, they discovered that at crowd densities above 4 people per square meter, the crowd begins to move in almost imperceptible eddies. In the animation below, lines trace out the path followed by single individuals in the crowd, showing the underlying “vortex.” At the plaza’s highest density — 9 people per square meter — one rotation of the vortex took about 18 seconds.

The team found similar patterns in footage of the crowd at the 2010 Love Parade disaster, in which 21 people died. These patterns aren’t themselves an indicator of an unsafe crowd — none of the studied Pamplona crowds had a problem — but understanding the underlying dynamics should help planners recognize and prevent dangerous crowd behaviors before the start of a stampede. (Image credit: still – San Fermín, animation – Bartolo Lab; research credit: F. Gu et al.; via Nature)

#activeMatter #collectiveMotion #crowds #fluidDynamics #physics #science #vortices

Strata of Starlings

Starlings come together in groups of up to thousands of birds for the protection of numbers. These flocks form spellbinding, undulating masses known as murmurations, where the movement of individual starlings sends waves spreading from neighbor to neighbor through the group. One bird’s effort to dodge a hawk triggers a giant, spreading ripple in the flock.

To capture the flowing nature of the murmuration, photographer and scientist Kathryn Cooper layers multiple images of the starlings atop one another. The birds themselves become pathlines marking the murmuration’s motion. The final images are surprisingly varied in form. Some flocks resemble a downpour of rain; others the dangling branches of a tree. (Image credit: K. Cooper; via Colossal)

#activeMatter #biology #birds #collectiveMotion #flocking #flowVisualization #fluidDynamics #fluidsAsArt #murmuration #physics #science

Strata of Starlings

Starlings come together in groups of up to thousands of birds for the protection of numbers. These flocks form spellbinding, undulating masses known as murmurations, where the movement of individual starlings sends waves spreading from neighbor to neighbor through the group. One bird’s effort to dodge a hawk triggers a giant, spreading ripple in the flock.

To capture the flowing nature of the murmuration, photographer and scientist Kathryn Cooper layers multiple images of the starlings atop one another. The birds themselves become pathlines marking the murmuration’s motion. The final images are surprisingly varied in form. Some flocks resemble a downpour of rain; others the dangling branches of a tree. (Image credit: K. Cooper; via Colossal)

#activeMatter #biology #birds #collectiveMotion #flocking #flowVisualization #fluidDynamics #fluidsAsArt #murmuration #physics #science

Strata of Starlings

Starlings come together in groups of up to thousands of birds for the protection of numbers. These flocks form spellbinding, undulating masses known as murmurations, where the movement of individual starlings sends waves spreading from neighbor to neighbor through the group. One bird’s effort to dodge a hawk triggers a giant, spreading ripple in the flock.

To capture the flowing nature of the murmuration, photographer and scientist Kathryn Cooper layers multiple images of the starlings atop one another. The birds themselves become pathlines marking the murmuration’s motion. The final images are surprisingly varied in form. Some flocks resemble a downpour of rain; others the dangling branches of a tree. (Image credit: K. Cooper; via Colossal)

#activeMatter #biology #birds #collectiveMotion #flocking #flowVisualization #fluidDynamics #fluidsAsArt #murmuration #physics #science

Herding Sheep

Flocks of birds, schools of fish, and herds of sheep all resemble fluids at times, and physicists have been trying to recreate their collective motion for decades. Many of these models simplify the animals into particles that follow simple rules based on the direction and speed of their neighbors. Over time, the models have grown more complex; for example, some might differentiate a “sheepdog” particle from “sheep” particles. And some models even tweak the “sheep” to account for the personality traits that real sheep show, like how skittish they behave toward a sheepdog. Physics World has a neat overview of several studies in this vein. (Image credit: E. Osmanoglu; via Physics World)

#collectiveMotion #flocking #fluidDynamics #physics #schooling #science #sheep

Like schools of fish, starlings gather in massive undulating crowds. Known as murmurations, these gatherings are a type of collective motion. Scientists often try to mimic these groups through simulations and lab experiments where individuals in a swarm obey simple rules that depend only on observing their neighbors. It requires very little, it turns out, to form swarms that move in this beautiful manner! (Video and image credit: J. van IJken; via Colossal)

https://fyfluiddynamics.com/2024/07/the-art-of-flying/

#biology #birds #collectiveMotion #flocking #fluidDynamics #fluidsAsArt #physics #science #swarming

Watch sand defy gravity and flow uphill thanks to “negative friction” - There's rarely time to write about every cool science-y story that comes... - https://arstechnica.com/?p=1980391 #12daysofchristmas #granularmaterials #collectivemotion #fluiddynamics #granularflow #engineering #science #physics

Watch sand defy gravity and flow uphill thanks to “negative friction” - There's rarely time to write about every cool science-y story that comes... - https://arstechnica.com/?p=1980391 #12daysofchristmas #granularmaterials #collectivemotion #fluiddynamics #granularflow #engineering #science #physics