Being left-handed is more than a bummer. Research shows that it affects not only how we use our bodies, but also our minds.
Theoretically, the chance of being left-handed or right-handed is 50-50, but the actual number of left-handers is much less than 50 percent. Although left-handed people are in the minority, this is a phenomenon that persists and it affects not only the body but also the mind.
In a binary manual world, there are only two ways things can go: left or right. Based on this binary nature, you can expect the same result with an equal number of left-handed and right-handed people in the world. You would be wrong.
Today, only about 10 percent of people worldwide are left-handed. There is little difference between the sexes, with about 12 percent of men and eight percent of women left-handed, but right-handedness is the most prevalent in the world. It’s interesting to think that this could come from a capitalist culture that wants a single market for its products. It is much more economical to just make golf sets with the right hand. It’s not just a matter of convenience when it comes to things like handwriting.
Some suggest that right-handedness is convenient when writing left-to-right, for example to avoid smudges, but right-handedness is also preferred in countries where the language is written from right to left. The evidence is that hand preference is deeper than culture, more than convenience, and starts even before salespeople touch your eyes.
Hand dominance seems to start in the womb.
In the magazine Scientific reportsresearchers from the University of Padua have published the results of their work, which they analyze that the fetus brings more to the mouth or eyes, and then returns to eight and nine-year-old children to see which hand they prefer. They found that by the 18th week of pregnancy, the dominant hand can accurately predict hand dominance almost 100% of the time. Other studies have shown that hand dominance is present as early as 13 weeks in utero and can be seen in finger-sucking activity.
In an article in the journal eLife, researchers from Ruhr-Universität Bochum suggested that because hand preference occurs before the motor cortex in the brain connects to the spinal cord, it is an aspect of the spinal cord that determines handedness.
It may simply be that the asymmetry in the genetic activity of the spinal cord, even before it connects to the brain, is what determines whether you are left- or right-handed. This in-utero determinism means you have no real choice about your dominant hand, which begs the question, what are the consequences of left-handedness and right-handedness? The answer is that these effects are both physical and psychological.
To the bone
Before we get to the most popular claims about creativity and right-brain dominance, let’s take a look at the physical effects of hand dominance. We start by checking out the amazing place that was sunk about 500 years ago.
The Mary Rose was the pride of King Henry VIII’s fleet and was sunk in a battle with French ships in the Solent in 1545. The ship was excavated in the 20th century and not only did many of the artifacts remain intact, but the skeletal remains of the crew were in surprisingly good condition. Just as in our time, right-handedness was more prevalent among the crew, but perhaps even more so because left-handedness was associated with magic and was therefore strongly discouraged. Assuming that the right-handedness prevailed among the crew, the researchers analyzed the remains of the skeleton and found that, for example, the right collar bones of the crew showed more age-related changes than the left bones. It probably depends on the right-handedness of the crew.
A lifetime of using one hand over the other affects your skeletal structure throughout life.
Other physical effects of symmetry also arise from handshake. This type of use-related effect is predictable, but digging into how manipulation relates to psychology and mental abilities becomes a bit more complicated.
Calculating creativity for left-handed people
A perennial claim about left-handers is that they are more creative. This fact is often supported by the fact that Leonardo da Vinci was left-handed. So were Mark Twain, Mozart, Marie Curie, Nikola Tesla and Aristotle. This list is impressive, but while I don’t want to rain on left-handed parades, there are also some right-handers who have been very creative. Ernest Hemingway, Steven Spielberg, Virginia Woolf and philosopher Simone Weil were also right-handed.
The thing is, compiling lists like these doesn’t really prove anything other than what the list compiler wants you to believe.
A more interesting biological argument linking left-handedness to creativity is based on the fact that the left side of the body is controlled by the right hemisphere of the brain, which is more “creative” than the “analytical” left hemisphere. It’s a good logic, but it’s not that simple.
It is true that the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body and vice versa. It is also true that the two hemispheres of the brain have specialties.
For example, language is mostly processed in the left hemisphere, while face recognition is mostly done in the right. However, the left and right hemispheres of your brain do not work separately.
There is a bundle of nerve tissue known as the corpus callosum that connects them. Emerging from this complex physiology is a singular reality.
To say that left-handers are right-brained is just an oversimplification. Researchers at the University of Washington have confirmed that the vast majority of right-handed people rely on the left hemisphere of the brain for language processing. However, as researchers at Bangor University in the UK noted in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, about 70 percent of left-handers are also left-hemisphere dependent when it comes to language. Although there are lateral differences when it comes to the use of the cerebral hemispheres, it is not correct to say that left-handers are completely right-brained. However, it is true that left-handers tend to have a more developed right hemisphere, and their corpus callosum is larger, indicating greater communication between the two hemispheres. This tells us that the theoretical foundation of the “creative left” is not entirely stable, but how does it play out in real life?
At Cornell University, USA, researchers looked for an answer to this question by reviewing more than 1,000 scientific articles on the subject, dating back more than 100 years. Papers that did not report their data in a standardized manner were weeded out, but what remained was a meta-analysis of more than a century of research. We know that “divergent thinking” is supported by the right hemisphere of the brain and is the ability to explore many possible solutions to problems and unexpected connections.
Divergent thinking is the essence of creativity.
The analysis showed that during these 100 years of research, abstinence made no real difference in terms of divergent thinking and creativity.
If that’s causing you a bit of left-handed frustration, don’t worry, because researchers at the University of Liverpool in England have discovered that you have another brain power. Through a survey of more than 2,300 elementary and middle school students, they found that left-handed people are much better at solving complex math problems. For easier arithmetic calculations, right-handers performed similarly, but when math pressure was on, left-handers had an advantage.
There are other, more simple ways that your hand affects the way you interact with your world.
On the other hand
You probably think of yourself as the mistress of your domain or perhaps the captain of your soul. Most of us think in one way or another that what we do consciously determines what we do in this life. But, in reality, your hand can influence the decisions you make.
Publishing their research in the journal Psychological Science, the researchers conducted a series of experiments and found that when participants were asked which of two products they would buy or which of two alien creatures seemed more trustworthy, people often chose the product or the alien that appeared next to their favorite hand. Considering the predominance of right-handers in the world, therefore advertisers prefer to place their ads on the right-hand page. Such manual preferences have been demonstrated in children under five years of age.
The theory goes that people like things better when they are easier to understand and communicate. Left-handers have an easier time dealing with things on their left side. At least some of your decisions in life will come down to what’s easiest and most fluid, and that’s often determined by your dominant hand.
