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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.'"
...and I thought it was because I was right-handed!
Correct the data for laterality (right hand preference in majority of the population), then maybe the results will be interesting. Even then, the explanation is bull. Unlike sight, the auditory system doesn't work cross-hemispherically. Sound from the right side is carried by the auditory nerve into the right portion of the temporal lobe.
This article suggests that the experiments were conducted by the very people who were proposing the hypothesis. That's not very scientific - this should have been double blind. Any number of factors can effect the success rate of getting the cigarettes - including if the researchers believed they were likely to be more successful.
-- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
Generally 176 is a sufficiently large sample for statistical purposes. There are methods to calculate how likely it is that the observed differences weren't just random luck. In other words, you can calculate the chance of getting the observed results when there is no real difference. When this chance (called a p-value) is low (one common significance level is 5%), you can conclude that it wasn't just luck and another factor was at work.
More stuff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothesis_test
indeed, the corpus callosum does connect the two hemispheres -- but remember, not everything in the brain is "active" -- much of it is passive, and it's not just "excitatory" -- it's also inhibitory. a lot of the signals on one side do not get routed to the other, to use a computer term.
at the same time, remember that the left-brain/right-brain stuff is pop psychology. one simple scientific finding, that language is primarily left-lateralized, got turned into this gigantic thing that just isn't true or in any way demonstrable.
This is why successful leaders tend to prefer advice from their "right hand man". Who listens to their "left hand man"? No one - that's who!
if you take to a soldier in the right ear as your going down the squad line
The following person not only remembers it, he's scarred for life.
Ugg, how is it that the parent is modded down but the GP is modded insightful? The GP is basically just saying "well, that doesn't feel like enough to me", while the parent points out accurately that it very easy to determine what the probability is that the results are due to chance. Since the article states that the researchers obtained "significantly" more cigarettes, I'm assuming that this is at least based on the common level of 5%. You can have a small sample size that is highly statistically significant if the skew is large enough. Unfortunately, even on slashdot, most people don't understand statistics.
That said, hypothesis testing just determines the probability that the results are NOT due to chance. Thus, it's totally possible that the results are due to something different that what the researchers propose - maybe they were just friendlier when asking from the right side.
My girlfriend is left handed, BUT she has dextrocardia, a condition in which her heart is on the left side of her chest. Her liver is also mirrored. Persons with this condition often show mirroring in all of their organs, including the brain. She talks with the phone against her left ear...which I suppose would make sense according to this study.
The parent is modded down because it's a Anon Cow post, and most mods seem to mod/read with their normal reading hiddens turned on. Chances are that it's simply not being looked at enough yet to get modded up. Having said that, as the parent of this is a +5 already, those mods should be modding the parent up as well.
Well! Get on the case boobs!
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
it puts this story in hilarious contrast:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article3817270.ece
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The extent of most Slashdot users statistics knowledge is to scream 'Correlation is not causation' at any science story. This might have something to do with the fact that anyone who uses the phrase is instantly modded +5 Insightful, but then again, correlation is not causation.
"Talk to the hand"
Right or left hand?
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I remember that, years ago, we used to all say that American males were more deaf in their left ears from driving around with the windows open. Italians would be in the same situation. If this were true, then a test in the UK should find more bias in the opposite direction due to driving right-hand-drive cars.
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.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
Actually, if you're a female, it doesn't matter which ear you talk into as long as you press your breasts into my arm when you make the request.
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.