Do left-handed people think differently?
Happy International Left-Handers Day! Today is the one day when those who are left-handed can celebrate their remarkable dexterity and differences from the right-handed community of the world.
This year is the 44th annual Left-Handers Day, a date designed to celebrate ‘lefties’ (in terms of hands, not politics) in a world where the vast majority of people are right-handed.
Only around 11% of the world’s population are left-handed and research shows that it has been this way for over 5,000 years.
Scientists still do not know why some people are left-handed when the majority are right-handed, but the most accepted theory – called the Homo loquens hypothesis – is about the side of the brain controlling the right hand.
So if being left or right handed is dictated by our brains, does that mean that left-handed people think differently?
Do left-handed people think differently?
The brains of left-handers are different from those of right-handers, in that their brain lateralization – what people use the left and right sides of the brain for – is different.
There have been countless studies into handedness and brain lateralization and many theories floated over the years – although many have very little genuine scientific evidence to support them.
However, results from a 2009 study by Stanford University concluded that left-handed people may indeed think different to those who are right handed, or at least, they see the world a little differently.
The results of the study showed that, when shown images and illustrations on a piece of paper and asked to make an assumption based on what they saw, people who are left-handed were naturally drawn to drawings on the left-hand side of the page, forming their opinion based on that.
‘For left-handed people, implicitly, they think good stuff is on the left and bad stuff is on the right, even though consciously, explicitly, everything in language and culture is telling them the exact opposite,’ the study’s lead author said at the time.
While this is only one study is many ongoing studies on the subject, it does suggest that, in some way, left-handed people may think differently to people who are right-handed.
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