When people don't have signs or other external cues for direction, we will probably end up walking in circles. That's according to a new psychological study conducted by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany. For example, someone trying to walk straight through a dense forest on a day where the sun is blocked by clouds will likely start drifting into more of a circular path after just 100 meters or less. From Science News:
Circular walking occurs when people have to rely solely on bodily cues, such as rotational shifts and joint movements, to estimate the location of "straight ahead," (researcher Jan) Souman hypothesizes. As random errors in bodily feedback accumulate, a person eventually drifts to one side or the other. A walker dependent on bodily cues may first make a circle to the right, drift back to a straight-ahead direction, start to zigzag and then make a circle to the left.
"You may think that you're walking in a straight line, but in fact the direction you're walking in is drifting more and more away from straight ahead, making you walk in circles," Souman says…
Psychologist John Rieser of Vanderbilt University in Nashville calls the new findings exciting. He and his colleagues have found that blindfolded people veer off course but don't circle when walking up to 100 meters across a grassy field. But cues from the ground, such as variations in grass length in an otherwise predictable environment, may have reduced veering from a straight line, Rieser says.
"I suspect that one's subjective sense of straight ahead, and up-down too, are easily changed by environmental conditions," he remarks.
"How to walk in circles without really trying"
