Publication Cover
Laterality
Asymmetries of Brain, Behaviour, and Cognition
Volume 23, 2018 - Issue 5
763
Views
0
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Articles

Fly on the right: Lateral preferences when choosing aircraft seats

, &
Pages 610-624 | Received 22 Sep 2017, Accepted 11 Dec 2017, Published online: 20 Dec 2017
 

ABSTRACT

A small preference has been observed for people to choose seats on the left of aircraft when booking via an online system. Although this is consistent with pseudoneglect—the known leftward bias in perception and representation—rightward preferences have been commonly observed in seating selection tasks in other environments. Additionally, the previous research in aircraft seating was unable to dissociate a bias to one side of the screen from a bias to one side of the cabin of the aircraft. Here, we present a study in which participants were asked to select seats for a range of fictional flights. They demonstrated a preference for seats on the right of the cabin, irrespective of whether the right of the cabin appeared to either the right or the left of the screen, a preference for seats towards the front of the aircraft and a preference to favour window and aisle seats. This suggests, in contrast to previous research, that participants demonstrated a rightward lateral bias to representations of an aircraft. These results may have implications for our understanding of asymmetries in cognition as well as having potentially important practical implications for airlines.

Data availability

The data and R analysis scripts associated with this research are available at http://osf.io/trpnq

Acknowledgement

The research was conducted in Human Cognitive Neuroscience, Psychology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Reprints and Corporate Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:

Academic Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:

If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. For more information, please visit our Permissions help page.