<p>It may have to do with language.</p>

<p>The idea that language influences thought is called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity" rel="nofollow">Linguistic Relativity</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>The more accepted weak version claims that linguistic categories and
  usage only influence thoughts and decisions.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Lera Boroditsky summarizes research on the influence language has on <a href="https://www.edge.org/conversation/how-does-our-language-shape-the-way-we-think" rel="nofollow">direction and time</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>English speakers tend to talk about time using horizontal spatial
  metaphors (e.g., "The best is ahead of us," "The worst is behind us"),
  whereas Mandarin speakers have a vertical metaphor for time (e.g., the
  next month is the "down month" and the last month is the "up month").
  ... Imagine this simple experiment. I stand next to you, point to a
  spot in space directly in front of you, and tell you, "This spot,
  here, is today. Where would you put yesterday? And where would you put
  tomorrow?" When English speakers are asked to do this, they nearly
  always point horizontally. But Mandarin speakers often point
  vertically, about seven or eight times more often than do English
  speakers.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>And in more detail in a <a href="https://psych.stanford.edu/~lera/papers/sci-am-2011.pdf" rel="nofollow">Scientific American article</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>... my colleague Alice Gaby of the University of California, Berkeley,
  and I gave Kuuk Thaayorre speakers sets of pictures that showed
  temporal progressions—a man aging, a crocodile growing, a banana being
  eaten. We then asked them to arrange the shuffled photographs on the
  ground to indicate the correct temporal order. We tested each person
  twice, each time facing in a different cardinal direction. English
  speakers given this task will arrange the cards so that time proceeds
  from left to right. Hebrew speakers will tend to lay out the cards
  from right to left. This shows that writing direction in a language
  influences how we organize time. The Kuuk Thaayorre, however, did not
  routinely arrange the cards from left to right or right to left. They
  arranged them from east to west. ... in Aymara, a language spoken in
  the Andes, the past is said to be in front and the future behind. And
  the Aymara speakers’ body language matches their way of talking: in
  2006 Raphael Núñez of U.C.S.D. and Eve Sweetser of U.C. Berkeley found
  that Aymara gesture in front of them when talking about the past and
  behind them when discussing the future.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>This suggests that if you reversed the exercise, binding the left/right keys to movement forward or back, then you might get different results from Hebrew speakers than English ones.  And if you presented this exercise to speakers of Kuuk Thaayorre, then the results might depend on which way the keyboard is oriented - ie, you would get different results depending on whether the keyboard faces East or West!</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-07-25T23:14:47.277Z
I was the only right-to-left language native speaker in the group and I also bound the keys the same way. It seems that without a controlled experiment (and not just an observation of a given state) there is little way to know the reason considering all these possibilities.
user1803551
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-07-26T00:43:45.497Z
Well, I wouldn't expect Hebrew speakers (for example) to have different results for clockwise/counter clockwise, because clocks and time metaphors are the same in both languages.  Perhaps native Mandarin speakers or (if you can find them) Aymara speakers might have different results since their time metaphors differ?  Hard to tell.
Arnon Weinberg
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-07-23T03:30:22.500Z
2016-07-23T03:54:48.187Z
2016-07-23T03:54:48.187Z
Arnon Weinberg
<p>The following is an observation I made in an informal sample group of about 10 people. I am looking into understanding the behavior I observed. Here is the setting:</p>

<p>On a computer keyboard there are the 4 arrow directions: up/forward, down/backward, left and right. Only the up/forward and down/backward keys are functional. On the screen is a first-person view that can rotate left (counterclockwise) and right (clockwise). The up/forward and down/backward keys are to be bounded to those rotations, so that pressing one would rotate the view in the bound direction.</p>

<p>I've noticed that most people bind the up/forward key to the right rotation and the down/backward key to the left rotation. I thought that this has to do with handedness, but it seems not to be the case. The exact numbers don't matter because there is not enough here for statistical significance. It could be that there is an association of clockwise rotation with (time) moving forwards, and same for counterclockwise.</p>

<p>Is there any reasoning for this, or studies on this?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-07-24T19:43:08.700Z
Is forward associated with right and backwards with left? No, forward is associated with optimism, whichever handed-ness or language is utilized. Backward is associated with pessimism, whichever handed-ness or language is utilized. In your 'test', (Before you administered the 'test', what was the intended goal?) neither handed-ness nor language are especially important to the participants of the 'test', they would be more inclined to address the optimism or pessimism which is a sub-text of the experience.
Stephen Kirby
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-07-25T20:11:19.793Z
I like the question and have always found the expression "turn it to the right" (to mean clockwise) confusing.  When you turn a nob clockwise, the top of the nob moves to the right, the bottom moves to the left, the right moves down, etc. There seems to be an unspoken assumption that "turn to the right" is with respect to the top of whatever you're turning.
Syntax Junkie
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-07-25T23:11:05.820Z
@RandallStewart Indeed interesting. When talking about a nob there is a symmetry for its up/down parts, but if you think of clock dials they run across only the radius (and not the diameter). I think that because of this symmetry breaking we associate an absolute direction: when the dial is at its initial position (12:00), it moves right when turning clockwise.
user1803551
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-07-25T23:12:59.953Z
@StephenKirby This was not a test, this was an observation of a given state. In a computer game I noticed that most people choose the keybinding I detailed above. The game itself does not favor one of the directions, so in of itself is irrelevant.
user1803551
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-03-30T04:56:15.167Z
Forward left backwards right also relate to helicopters, which fly by means similar to a gyroscope. When the collective pitch is moved upwards, the cyclic must be moved forward and left pedal must be used to balance out the torque acting on the body of the helicopter, and when the collective is moved down you have to move the cyclic back and also apply right pedal to counter the torque. I know this is a psychology forum but it is still interesting to think about how these two things relate to each other
JBG
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-03-30T05:00:43.763Z
Looking back it is forward right backwards left but this has the same effect considering that using the left pedal moves the nose right and using the right pedal moves the nose left, which is the opposite configuration for rudder controls which is usually seen as a more intuitive way because torque isn’t as intuitive as thrust due to a number of things.
JBG
<lateralization><preferences>
Is forward associated with right and backwards with left?
user1803551
# Is forward associated with right and backwards with left?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2016-07-22)

The following is an observation I made in an informal sample group of about 10 people. I am looking into understanding the behavior I observed. Here is the setting:

On a computer keyboard there are the 4 arrow directions: up/forward, down/backward, left and right. Only the up/forward and down/backward keys are functional. On the screen is a first-person view that can rotate left (counterclockwise) and right (clockwise). The up/forward and down/backward keys are to be bounded to those rotations, so that pressing one would rotate the view in the bound direction.

I've noticed that most people bind the up/forward key to the right rotation and the down/backward key to the left rotation. I thought that this has to do with handedness, but it seems not to be the case. The exact numbers don't matter because there is not enough here for statistical significance. It could be that there is an association of clockwise rotation with (time) moving forwards, and same for counterclockwise.

Is there any reasoning for this, or studies on this?

**Tags:** lateralization, preferences

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Is forward associated with right and backwards with left? No, forward is associated with optimism, whichever handed-ness or language is utilized. Backward is associated with pessimism, whichever handed-ness or language is utilized. In your 'test', (Before you administered the 'test', what was the intended goal?) neither handed-ness nor language are especially important to the participants of the 'test', they would be more inclined to address the optimism or pessimism which is a sub-text of the experience.  
> **username_2**: I like the question and have always found the expression "turn it to the right" (to mean clockwise) confusing.  When you turn a nob clockwise, the top of the nob moves to the right, the bottom moves to the left, the right moves down, etc. There seems to be an unspoken assumption that "turn to the right" is with respect to the top of whatever you're turning.  
> **username_0**: @RandallStewart Indeed interesting. When talking about a nob there is a symmetry for its up/down parts, but if you think of clock dials they run across only the radius (and not the diameter). I think that because of this symmetry breaking we associate an absolute direction: when the dial is at its initial position (12:00), it moves right when turning clockwise.  
> **username_0**: @StephenKirby This was not a test, this was an observation of a given state. In a computer game I noticed that most people choose the keybinding I detailed above. The game itself does not favor one of the directions, so in of itself is irrelevant.  
> **username_3**: Forward left backwards right also relate to helicopters, which fly by means similar to a gyroscope. When the collective pitch is moved upwards, the cyclic must be moved forward and left pedal must be used to balance out the torque acting on the body of the helicopter, and when the collective is moved down you have to move the cyclic back and also apply right pedal to counter the torque. I know this is a psychology forum but it is still interesting to think about how these two things relate to each other  
> **username_3**: Looking back it is forward right backwards left but this has the same effect considering that using the left pedal moves the nose right and using the right pedal moves the nose left, which is the opposite configuration for rudder controls which is usually seen as a more intuitive way because torque isn’t as intuitive as thrust due to a number of things.  

---

## 1 answers

### Answer by username_4 on 2016-07-23. Score: 4

It may have to do with language.

The idea that language influences thought is called [Linguistic Relativity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity):

> The more accepted weak version claims that linguistic categories and
> usage only influence thoughts and decisions.

Lera Boroditsky summarizes research on the influence language has on [direction and time](https://www.edge.org/conversation/how-does-our-language-shape-the-way-we-think):

> English speakers tend to talk about time using horizontal spatial
> metaphors (e.g., "The best is ahead of us," "The worst is behind us"),
> whereas Mandarin speakers have a vertical metaphor for time (e.g., the
> next month is the "down month" and the last month is the "up month").
> ... Imagine this simple experiment. I stand next to you, point to a
> spot in space directly in front of you, and tell you, "This spot,
> here, is today. Where would you put yesterday? And where would you put
> tomorrow?" When English speakers are asked to do this, they nearly
> always point horizontally. But Mandarin speakers often point
> vertically, about seven or eight times more often than do English
> speakers.

And in more detail in a [Scientific American article](https://psych.stanford.edu/~lera/papers/sci-am-2011.pdf):

> ... my colleague Alice Gaby of the University of California, Berkeley,
> and I gave Kuuk Thaayorre speakers sets of pictures that showed
> temporal progressions—a man aging, a crocodile growing, a banana being
> eaten. We then asked them to arrange the shuffled photographs on the
> ground to indicate the correct temporal order. We tested each person
> twice, each time facing in a different cardinal direction. English
> speakers given this task will arrange the cards so that time proceeds
> from left to right. Hebrew speakers will tend to lay out the cards
> from right to left. This shows that writing direction in a language
> influences how we organize time. The Kuuk Thaayorre, however, did not
> routinely arrange the cards from left to right or right to left. They
> arranged them from east to west. ... in Aymara, a language spoken in
> the Andes, the past is said to be in front and the future behind. And
> the Aymara speakers’ body language matches their way of talking: in
> 2006 Raphael Núñez of U.C.S.D. and Eve Sweetser of U.C. Berkeley found
> that Aymara gesture in front of them when talking about the past and
> behind them when discussing the future.

This suggests that if you reversed the exercise, binding the left/right keys to movement forward or back, then you might get different results from Hebrew speakers than English ones. And if you presented this exercise to speakers of Kuuk Thaayorre, then the results might depend on which way the keyboard is oriented - ie, you would get different results depending on whether the keyboard faces East or West!

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: I was the only right-to-left language native speaker in the group and I also bound the keys the same way. It seems that without a controlled experiment (and not just an observation of a given state) there is little way to know the reason considering all these possibilities.  
> **username_4**: Well, I wouldn't expect Hebrew speakers (for example) to have different results for clockwise/counter clockwise, because clocks and time metaphors are the same in both languages.  Perhaps native Mandarin speakers or (if you can find them) Aymara speakers might have different results since their time metaphors differ?  Hard to tell.  

---

