Generally speaking, the left side of the brain processes language and is more logical, whereas the right side of the brain is more impulsive and creative. In the laboratory, it has been shown that when subjects are given verbal streams in the left and right ear, the stream in the right ear tends to take precedence – presumably demonstrating the preference for the language processing in the left hemisphere (which is where right ear auditory input goes for processing). However, laboratory conditions are rarely representative of the real world.

A group of Italian scientists, however, took this research into the real world.

You’re in a loud and sweaty Italian dance club when a woman approaches you. To be heard over the techno, she leans in close and yells into your ear, “Hai una sigaretta?”

If she spoke into your right ear, you would be twice as likely to give her a cigarette than if she asked by your left ear, according to a new study that employed this methodology in the clubs of Pescara, Italy. Of 88 clubbers who were approached on the right, 34 let the researcher bum a smoke, compared with 17 of 88 whom she approached on the left.

“The present work is one of the few studies demonstrating the natural expression of hemispheric asymmetries, showing their effect in everyday human behavior,” write psychologists Daniele Marzoli and Luca Tommasi of the University G. d’Annunzio in Italy in the journal Naturwissenschaften.

So now we know – not just in the lab, but in a nightclub! The right ear is more open to processing speech, so for something like a request, it is the ear to use.

Link to article in Wired Science