Lost? Then You Probably Are Going In Circles

The Circular Reasoning can be found on ScienceNews.org

From the Max Planck Institute in Germany, scientists have found that people tend to walk in circles in unfamiliar terrain. It is hypothesized this is because when people have no clue to direction, they rely on their own body to tell them which way they are going.

This includes "rotational shifts and joint movements" which tell the person where straight this. Since this isn't accurate at all, error makes the person eventually drift to a side.

“You may think that you’re walking in a straight line, but in fact the direction you’re walking in is drifting more and more away from straight ahead, making you walk in circles,” Souman says.

Researchers have found that people start to lose their sense of straight after walking the length of a football field. In one experiment, 3 men were put in the Sahara desert and were told to walk straight. Two walked during the day and one at night with a full moon. It turned out the day-walkers "veered off course but did not go in circles." However, the night man seemed to make several turns, almost walking backwards when the moon hid the clouds.

In another study, 6 college students walked in a German forest which gave no clues to direction. Four walked on a cloudy day and all 4 walked in circles; only 3 of them realized they were doing so. The remaining two walked on a sunny day and went straight only wavering when the sun was hid by the clouds.

In a third study, 15 students were blindfolded and had to walk straight down a field. All but three walked in circles no more than 20m wide.

However, this new research proves to be useful to someone in a horror movie:

In emergency situations, cinematic monster hunters and others may become so panicked that they disregard external heading cues and unintentionally end up back where they started, Souman suggests.