Speak into the right ear when asking for help

If you want to increase the likelihood of success when asking others to do something, say the request to their right ear, according to the scientists' suggestion.

You should speak into the right ear when asking others.Photo: Telegraph.

The left hemisphere handles the information that the ear must receive. Until now, the scientific community has always believed that the left hemisphere of the brain processes speech information more logically and effectively than the right hemisphere. So they think that we should talk to the right people when we want to ask or make mistakes.

To test this hypothesis, Luca Tommasi and Daniele Marzoli - two doctors of Chieti University (Italy) - choose three nightclubs to study. Two scientists reached nearly 176 people and asked for cigarettes. In doing so, one person deliberately spoke into the left ear of the guests in the nightclub, while the other said in the right ear. The two researchers recorded the number of people who gave cigarettes in two corresponding groups.

The results showed that the proportion of people who were willing to smoke when hearing the request with the right ear was much higher than the group hearing with the left ear. This big difference does not depend on gender and age. The two scientists repeated the experiment with 176 people but exchanged objects to "right ear group" to hear the request with the left ear for the second time and vice versa. The proportion of people who gave medication when receiving the request with the right ear was still significantly larger than the group hearing with the left ear.

"This test shows that we should not stand on the left side of other people when asking them to do something for us," Tommasi said.