Need a Favor? Talk To My Right Ear

Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that scientists have found that if you want to get someone to do something, ask them in their right ear. Known as the 'right ear advantage,' scientists believe it is because information received through the right ear is processed by the left hand side of the brain which is more logical and better at deciphering verbal information than the right side of the brain. 'Talk into the right ear you send your words into a slightly more amenable part of the brain,' say researchers. The team, led by Dr. Luca Tommasi and Daniele Marzoli from the University of Chieti in central Italy, observed the behavior of hundreds of people in three nightclubs across the city where they intentionally addressed 176 people in either their right or their left ear when asking for a cigarette. They obtained significantly more cigarettes when they made their request in a person's right ear compared with their left. 'These results seem to be consistent with the hypothesized specialization of right and left hemispheres,' say researchers. 'We can also see this tendency when people use the phone, most will naturally hold it to their right ear.'"

Comments

Re:Double Blind?

[Miseph]

That also strikes me as a terribly unscientific test... even in Italy, not everyone smokes, and even the ones who do may be out of cigarettes or in a location not conducive to smoking. did they also record the number of people who gave logical, but negative (ie. "I don't have any"), responses? What if they didn't ask for cigarettes until the end of the night, so they were in short supply?

What if people just got sick of them mooching and said no out of spite? As a former smoker, I can reasonably state that most are pretty generous to a point, but once you cross it they run out of sympathy very quickly... bumming cigarettes off of everyone you see can get you to that point very quickly.

Did they make sure to get an even mix of responses for males asking males, males asking females, females asking females and females asking males? Did they make sure not to have the person asking in left ears be the one with no social skills and bad breath? When I was a smoker, a cute girl had a MUCH better shot at getting a cigarette from me than, say, some whiny dude... given that this was done at nightclubs, and what many people actually go to nightclubs to (attemp to) do, this is actually a pretty major consideration that I somehow doubt they took into consideration.

And what the hell is with that sample size? 176 people? You went to 3 Italian nightclubs and could only find 176 smokers to ask for cigarettes between them? At least pretend you're trying to gather a statistically significant number of responses.

I'm not necessarily sure that they shouldn't have run any experiments simply because it is their hypothesis... but if they're going to claim some sort of success for it then they certainly need a better experiment than asking people for cigarettes at a nightclub. Honestly though, if nobody ever did scientists to test their own hypotheses, we'd probably still be in the Aristotelian phase of scientific concept.

Re:Unconvinced

[dexmachina]

I don't know about the scientists in question, but I am a science major with classes in psych and neuroscience. Yes, I was simplifying. One of the other repliers to my original post explains it in a bit more detail. I make no claim to be smarter or more learned than anyone. In fact, without seeing the actual paper it's hard to tell if the contralateral explanation is even given by the actual authors- it's in the article intro after the vague "Scientists say..." leader, so it could just be BS on the part of the journalist.

Ironic that in a post railing against jumping to conclusions, you know nothing about me and yet in two seconds flat come to the conclusion that I couldn't possibly know what I'm talking about.

whether or not this is true

[circletimessquare]

it puts this story in hilarious contrast:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article3817270.ece

If you're thinking of asking your beloved to marry you, make sure that you utter your declaration of love into his or her left ear; it may increase your chances of hearing a heart-lifting "yes". New research suggests that declarations of love, jokes, or words of anger are best remembered when they are heard through the left ear, while instructions, directions and non-emotional messages have more impact on the right side.

It is all to do with how our brains process information. Although the left and right hemispheres, or sides, of the brain are similar structures, they have specialised functions. The left side, it is suggested, is more logic-based and dominant, while the right is the more imaginative side, more visual, intuitive, emotional and spatially aware. Because the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, the left ear has been shown in some research to be the route to the emotional side of the brain, and the right ear to the non-emotional, logical side.

i don't know how true all of this is, but there's all sorts of anecdotes like this

for example: women usually have their left breast a little larger than their right breast. regardless of which is larger, and regardless of handedness, women, and all simians in fact, and even breastless fathers, tend to hold their babies with their right arms to their left breast. this places the babies head on the left side of the body, putting the baby closer to the left side sensory inputs, which are governed by the right side of the brain, the more emotional side, thus establishing more of an emotional bond

so i don't know about all this ear stuff, but there seems to be something, at best subtle, that is real about side preference and emotions and logic

I hold my phone to my left ear

[Atmchicago]

I also hold the phone to my left ear despite being right-handed, but for a different reason: my right ear is deaf! I've often wondered if I perceive language and sound differently than others (besides the obvious lack of stereo). Perhaps doing a study with half-deaf people could give some interesting results.