Understanding your better ear

Our reactions in certain situations

We pick up the phone and intuitively hold it to a specific ear. If we are forced to hold it to the other ear, it feels strange. And we feel that we do not clearly understand the person we are talking to. If we are interested in what happens in a room behind a closed door, we listen at the door. Again, we have a preference for a certain side. Some hold the left half of their face to the door, others the right.

What do you listen to?

Experts call this phenomenon preference ears. Researchers have paid little attention to it until now - in 1998, there was a scientific study on ears at the University of Dresden (Germany). The researchers tested 300 people to see which ear they used to listen for different sounds. For example, the test subjects were asked to listen for a stopwatch on the table or a soft voice, listen at a door and make a phone call to test which ear they were holding the telephone receiver to.

The result: 62 percent of the test persons were right-eared, 21 percent left-eared. 17 percent showed no preference. For comparison: 84 percent of the test persons were right-handed, 10 percent left-handed and 6 percent ambidextrous. In other words: a close relationship between the favourite hand and the favourite ear does not automatically exist. This relationship was even more pronounced on the telephone. This is probably due to the fact that the favourite hand is used to reach for the receiver and then the corresponding ear on the same side is selected. Over the years you get used to this side and always use this ear.

Even more to our preferences

Experts refer to our preferences for certain sides of the body as laterality. Thus there are preferences for eyes or legs in addition to earliness and preference for a hand. For example, we are left- or right-eyed and left- or right-legged, depending on which eye we use to look through a keyhole, for example, or which leg we prefer to jump off with.