I guess the theory could easily apply to cubicles for the ladies… ;)

Which urinal/cubicle will you choose when going into a public toilet? Will it be the closest to you? Somewhere in the middle? Or somewhere further? What criteria did you use to make your choice? No criteria? Cleanest? Nearest because you just had to pee? One with toilet paper?

Making a choice is easy when the choice is obvious. If something is floating, or if the urinal is overflowing, you probably don’t want to do it there. So, to make this simpler, let’s narrow down the criteria list. Let’s focus on urinals and let’s say all urinals are clean and in proper working order. And let’s say there’s only 3 of them, with no one occupying any. You enter from the left.

Which one will you choose? (from the left) A, B or C?

Apparently, there’s a “urinal etiquette” where you don’t want to be close to anyone when peeing. There’s a sort of spatial pecking order.

I think more importantly, it tells you something about yourself. Standing in A or C will mean you will always only have one neighbour at most. You are probably not very confident about yourself or you just want some privacy. Standing in C will probably mean a lower confidence (or increased privacy) compared to standing in A. However, standing in A could also mean you are very confident of yourself since you’re closest to entrance and everyone who passes by will have to pass you.

Standing in B will probably mean you don’t want to be close to the entrance, and yet not too far into the toilet, providing you with a margin of spatial comfort on both sides. Either that or you just want to show off. According to the urinal etiquette, staring is not ethical, but peeking once is ok. ;)