Have you ever been told you have selective hearing? You do (unconsciously)! It has been announced that your right ear is preferable to us when being addressed. Humans are more likely to perform a task when something is requested in our right ear than our left. Three studies were done to test this, looking at ear preference in human communication.
Doctor Luca Tommasi and Daniele Marzoli show that there is a natural bias that shows itself everyday, and this depends on the hemisphere asymmetry of the brain. It is said that the right ear dominance, which reflects the left brain's superiority (in processing verbal stimuli), is one of the best known asymmetries in humans. This has all been observed in lab settings, but never spontaneously "out in the field."
Dr. Tommasi and Marzoli conducted the three studies that looked at communication in a night club setting (which is very noisy). The first study conducted used 286 people in the club, and they observed that over the loud music, 72% of all interactions took place on the right side of the listener. In the second study, they chose 160 people in a club and spoke things that were meaningless and inaudible into their ears. They waited to see if the person would try and turn their head to catch the conversation better. When the person switched or not, they asked if they could have a cigarette. Only the women showed a consistent right-ear preference, but overall, 58% offered their right ear for listening. There wasn't a link to the number of cigarettes gained and the ear hearing the request. The third and final study was conducted with 176 clubbers and asked them right away if they could have a cigarette in their right or left ear. They received more cigaretted when they asked a person in their right ear versus their left. Coincidence?
The authors believe that this is not coincidence that the people were more giving when they heard a request in their right ear. Also, they think that there is definitely a right ear and a left hemisphere advantage when communicating with humans.
Update:
There were some really good questions, and they had me wondering about more things as well too! To clarify the "in the field" comment: they were saying that they had never performed any experiment or test out in the field until that one. Up until then, they had only tested this in a lab setting. I found this a little bit strange because I would have tested it in the field where it would be a lot less expensive and time consuming to see if it was really worth it to test in a lab setting.
A confounding variable to this test would be whether or not people had cigarettes. In my opinion, I would have tested something that more people could have contributed such as tying a shoe. I am also very interested in the idea, that a bunch of you had mentioned, that this may have something to do with handedness, or maybe some people can be left dominant. These are all very interesting ideas, and I do hope they test in the near future.
-Alyson Paige (week 6)
This is a very interesting study. I have heard of ear dominance before, but did not know that ongoing studies were still in progress. It is kind of like if one is left-handed or right-handed: more people are right-eared than left-eared. Has there been any studies looking at whether hand dominance and ear dominance are connected?
ReplyDelete-Tricia Carlson
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ReplyDeleteI found this article very interesting also. When thinking about it, when I can't hear someone clearly I always turn my right ear towards them. What I found the most interesting was the correspondence to perform tasks when asked through the right ear, something that I have never heard of before, but would be curious to test out myself.
ReplyDelete--Kathleen Goller
This is an interesting find. I've heard of people being left-brain dominant or right-brain dominant, depending on how scientific/artistic they are. Is this related to which ear we use most at all? I've noticed that more people hold a phone to their right ear than to their left ear, but I always put the phone to my left ear. I wonder if the ear we put the phone to corresponds to this study.
ReplyDelete-Posted by Sarah Benjamin
Very cool. So one thing that caught my eye, what do you mean by saying that the results of this study have not been observed "in the field?" Isn't a club "in the field?" And I would be very curious to see what percentage of people surveyed were right handed. I feel like because I am right handed I do lots of things with my right side without even thinking. Something to consider. But overall real interesting. I'm totally going to test it out at work... ;)
ReplyDelete-Jillian O'Keefe
Very good article! I too was wondering if there was any correlation between a person's dominant hand and which ear they better hear things in. If I person is dominated on the left hand, I would assume their left ear is also more dominant. Why id it people were more likely to respond to requests made in their right ear? I find it interesting that people unconsciously turn their right ear towards a person when they can't hear them. Do they have any ideas for future or different tests they want to do? Overall, this was a very nice article and was very well written!
ReplyDelete-Emily Crete
Are you paying over $5 per pack of cigs? I buy high quality cigarettes over at Duty Free Depot and this saves me over 60%.
ReplyDelete