Blindfold Test Reveals Whether People Are Anxious Or Uninhibited

People experiencing anxiety walk in this direction.

People experiencing anxiety walk in this direction.

People experiencing anxiety tend to walk to the left, new research finds.

It results from more activity in the right-hand-side of the brain.

The conclusions come from a study in which people were blindfolded and asked to walk in a straight line.

The more inhibited and anxious people tended to veer to the left.

In comparison, people who experience more positive emotions tended to veer off to the right.

The more inhibited and anxious they were, the more people accidentally wandered to the left.

The more positive and approach-oriented, the more they accidentally wandered to the right.

The differences are thought to be due to how approach and avoidance mechanisms are organised in the brain.

Broadly speaking the left-hand-side of the brain is linked to the motivation to approach situations and people.

Since the left-hand-side of the brain is connected to the right-hand-side of the body, people with an approach motivation walk to the right.

The reverse is seen in those with inhibitory or anxious motivational processing.

The study was published in the journal Cognition (Weick et al., 2016).

→ Get Dr Jeremy Dean’s new anxiety ebook, discover the signs of anxiety and learn: what is anxiety?

Blindfolded image from Shutterstock


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This site is all about scientific research into how the mind works.

It’s mostly written by psychologist and author, Dr Jeremy Dean.

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Author: Jeremy Dean

Psychologist, Jeremy Dean, PhD is the founder and author of PsyBlog. He holds a doctorate in psychology from University College London and two other advanced degrees in psychology. He has been writing about scientific research on PsyBlog since 2004. He is also the author of the book "Making Habits, Breaking Habits" (Da Capo, 2013) and several ebooks.