Right side bias in choosing aircraft seating

Professor Sergio della Sala (Psychology) has published a study with colleagues at Queen Margaret University revealing that passengers, when selecting their aircraft seating, tend to choose seats located on the right hand side. 

It is well known that people display lateral tendencies (a preference for the right or the left) in laboratory experiments but researchers wanted to know whether these translated to the real world. Participants were presented with aircraft seating diagrams but, to rule out a bias towards one side of the computer screen over the other, these diagrams were facing either upwards or downwards.    Regardless of the diagram orientation, participants tended to favour choosing seats on the right hand side of the aircraft. This finding could contribute to our understanding of symmetries in cognition, but it may also have implications for airlines.