Foot ticklers come to the right conclusion
By Aisling Irwin and Richard Savill
THE right foot is more ticklish than the left foot, a research project has concluded.
After tickling 34 subjects intermittently for six hours each, a psychology student has shown that all but two found the experience much more tickly on the right sole. Jacqueline Smith, of Stirling University, used a wooden box with a pencil-shaped piece of plastic protruding from it. She called in male and female subjects, ensuring that she had a mixture of the right-and left-handed, and the right-and left-footed. They were asked to rate on a scale how ticklish their experiences were.
"Regardless of handedness and footedness people seemed to be more ticklish on their right foot," Miss Smith said. "It surprised me." The finding was true regardless of which foot was tickled first.
The difference may be because the left side of the brain deals with positive emotions such as laughter - and is connected to the right side of the body. This theory would fit with some evidence that pain may be more detectable on the left side of the body - the right side of the brain deals with negative emotion, she said.
Miss Smith also found that males seemed to be more ticklish than females, although men predicted beforehand that they would not be affected. However, the difference was very small.
Dr Peter Cahusac, a psychologist at Stirling University who supervised the research, said: "It depends on what sex the investigator is. Research has found that the same sex applying the tickle stimulus does not evoke such a strong sensation as different sex."
He warned that the difference detected between right and left feet was quite small: "It was only because she took a lot of subjects that she has got a statistically significant result. If you were to get someone to tickle your left and right feet, I don't think you would notice the difference. It is a small effect."
Miss Smith said: "There is really very little research on tickling. I suspect it is because people don't take it very seriously. But both pain and tickling are fairly related to emotions and anything that increases our knowledge of what sensitises people could help with pain research".
