Left-handed people more inhibited?

New research suggests the lefties are more likely to be inhibited and anxious. Psychologist Lynn Wright and her colleagues at the University of Abertay Dundee ran behavioral tests on more than 100 people to see if they agreed with statements like “I worry about making mistakes, "“Criticism or scolding hurts me quite a bit," and “I often act on the spur of the moment." The answers of left-handed subjects revealed more reticence than righties. From New Scientist:

In left-handers the right half of the brain is dominant, and it is this side that seems to control negative aspects of emotion. In right-handers the left brain dominates...

However, (Swansea University behavioral neuroscientist Philip Corr, who was not involved in the study,) says handedness is not so much a predictor of personality as a great way to understand how emotions are handled in our brains. “Although we may have a predisposition to an inhibition, that may encourage us during adulthood or childhood to develop coping strategies,” he says. “It could act as a blessing.”

Wright, a lefty, agrees. “They [left-handers] like to colour-code things, they like to write lists, it’s almost a way to alleviate their stress,” she says..

"Left-handed people are more inhibited"

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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tim

This is beacause a leftie in western society has to DRAG his writing hand over whatever words he/she has just written, whereas a right handed person’s hand always stays ahead of the written words.

Err, didn’t you ever get taught how to write left-handed? It really isn’t difficult; tilt the paper. Some people tilt it a lot, even 90 degrees but I’ve always manage perfectly well with 20 degrees or so – and I used to write with a fountain pen. In italic.
stratosfyr

@14:
No, not switched — as a kid, I could barely hold a pencil with my left hand. It feels intensely wrong. I naturally reach for things with my right hand.

According to some studies, something like 5-15% of people have “reversed” brains, though. Doctors sometimes test before certain kinds of brain surgery to see which hemisphere controls language (usually left, but sometimes right or sometimes it’s split between the two) so they don’t accidentally destroy the ability to speak.
grimshaw

I’m technically a lefty but I was conditioned to write with my right hand (damn nuns), and in doing so i developed a right-handed hooked-wrist style of writing. It’s worked for me so far.
celia

Clearly we’re more inhibited and anxious because we know the universe is planning to kill us off sooner than the rest of you.
NeonCat

As a left-handed person, I won’t say anything because I am afraid you would criticize me for it.

In all seriousness, I have to wonder if part of it may be that since so many people are right-handed, and there may still be people who are left-handed that were encouraged to use their right hands when young that if it may not set up some kind of inferiority complex when one is young.
minTphresh

the young woman i dated in college was left handed. she was anything but inhibited! exception to the rule i suppose. good times, tho.
diamantiferous

Actually, saying all left-handed people are right brained is WAY overstating it. Aside from the fact that it is hotly contested whether ANYONE has true hemispheric dominance, though it may be true that more lefties are right hemisphere dominant than righties, by no means are all lefties this way. I call shenanigans. (But I do like color-coding…)
trr

I remember once hearing a theory that left-handedness results from hypoxia during the birthing process.
Takuan

and then there is the ambisinister
The Unusual Suspect

We Molly-dookers are also more likely to be overachievers.

But that’s a left-handed compliment at best.
GauchoAmigo

How gauche.
Modusoperandi

I’m a lefty. I don’t know what that proves. Something, probably.
Sleepy13

Rings true for me I have to say.
I went to a Stiener school & they had me writing squiggly, illegible blot quite often.
Didn’t do me any harm though..
You lookin at me??!
..Sorry..
dragonfrog

I was going to say – how recently did schools stop trying to get left-handed pupils to write with their right hands? Have they even universally stopped doing so?

That must put a serious load of stress on the brain, trying to do everything with your off hand.

I wonder too if there’s some subtle effects arising from common objects and tools, overtly or subtly, being designed for right-handers – from the obvious, like how you have to hold a skil saw or pair of scissors, to the more subtle, like awkward reaches you have to make to put things away in a cupboard.
S_D

Apparently McCain and Obama are both left handed.
Obama is the sixth left hander out of 12 presidents since the end of the second world war. Among them: Reagan, George Bush Sr and Bill Clinton.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/24/barack-obama-mccain-white-house-left-handed
rrhobbs

I write left-handed, I’m in fact ambidexterous – I can write legibly with my right too – I eat with my left hand holding a fork, throw with my right arm and in baseball, bat right handed. I consider myself detail-oriented. It kind of bugs me when people go off trying to establish “norms”.
medra42

This is odd synchronicity. I just read a bit in RAW’s Prometheus Rising about how lefties like myself are more “intuitive” than righties.. just before a bit about synchronicities.

Anyway, this is how RAW explains why there supposedly are so many more left-handed “genius” artists and whatnottery… constant access to the right side of the brain allows us constant access to a part of consciousness that righties have more limited access.

Interesting(?) side note: Aleister Crowley reportedly made his adepts learn to write equally well with each hand, supposedly forcing them to break away from some of their natural biases and increase communication between the sides of the brain.

As a lefty with an awful case of ADD, I’ve got a fair amount of anxiety, mostly from the fact that I have no great passion or interest, which will keep me forever in shitty, low-paying jobs. But the NS article pegs me pretty well, in terms of going out and doing new things. I’m pretty stuck in my ways. Actually, I’m reading RAW in an attempt to see if I can’t break free a little bit in these last four years before 30.

All that said, I think that the article leaves out one very important aspect of ‘handed-ness.’ I write like a lefty, but I bat, golf, bowl, kick, cut, throw, and do almost everything else like a righty. In school, my teachers let me write left-handed, but my grandfather told me I was batting the wrong way, when I grabbed a bat and stood with my left shoulder out. Then again, I’m an excellent physical mimic.

Maybe I should have been a mime.

Anyway, I can get by with right-handed tools, but my left-handed wife finds it intolerable. She’s a lefty on everything. And oh lord don’t get me started on her anxieties.
The Unusual Suspect

I entered public school in Canada in 1962, and for the first four years of my education I could expect “The Ruler” to the back of my left hand if I so much as picked up a pencil with it.

I’ve since learned to do most tasks with either hand (albeit with varying degrees of success).
EeyoreX

Beeing a leftie myself, I have to point out that it IS more difficult for folks like us to develop a nice stabile handwriting, especially if you use pens with ink that dry somewhat slowly.

This is beacause a leftie in western society has to DRAG his writing hand over whatever words he/she has just written, whereas a right handed person’s hand always stays ahead of the written words.

My theory is that this might cause lefties to be more prone to planning things out ahead to aviod mistakes.
What seems to be the effect might actually be the cause, and vice versa.
JacobDavis

When one is told throughout their formative years that something which comes quite naturally to them is, in fact, unnatural and harmful, one might expect to develop problems with self-confidence. Being left-handed is a stigma for young people, and mildly so for adults. The symbols dictating that stigma are pervasive: shaking hands, the build of desks, religious themes regarding “left” vs. “right” hand paths, ignorant grade school teachers, the truly innocent exclamations of “Oh! I didn’t know you’re a leftie!”… Tell a person there’s something wrong with them over and over again, and they just might start believing it.
stratosfyr

I’m right handed, but I have just about every personality quirk and trait usually associated with left-handed people. I even used to write with a hooked hand.

I’m pretty sure my brain is backwards (sounds strange but it’s not uncommon), but it’s rather complicated to find out for sure.
Krenath

@#20/21/22:

I’m a lefty but I never learned to write with the paper tilted or with a hooked wrist.

Instead, I write with my hand below the line that I write on, so the wet ink stays above my fingers.

I can’t say that my handwriting is much to look at, but that’s mainly because I do my job and most all my written communication on a computer.

…though I have taken to tilting my hand just before scribbling my signature.

Oh, and I don’t agree with any of the generalizations the article makes. My (also left-handed) wife and my (also left-handed) mother can tell you that I don’t seem to be inclined to organize or color-code much of anything…
DominEditrix

Left-handed, not particularly inhibited, have only colour-coded to let movers know which box goes in which room, have learnt to cope with right-handed tools and idiots who say ‘Your handwriting is so good!’, as if being left-handed were indicative of a lack of fine motor control.

When I was a child, the penmanship teacher would drone on about the left hand being the Devil’s hand, how the sinistrally-inclined would burn in Hell. Just to get my own back, I worked very hard to have the best writing in the class. When I mentioned all of this to my father – a priest – he went round to the school and reduced the principal to a quivering mass of jelly. [The school had been told that I was left-handed, and was to remain so - none of this insisting I use the wrong hand.] I was fortunate – I can imagine that being subjected to that sort of thing without having people to defend one’s right to be left-handed could cause all sorts of neuroses and inhibitions. This makes me wonder about the study – somehow, it makes more sense that social disapprobriation and living in a world designed for right-handed people would have an enormous effect on the left-handed, brain hemispheres be damned.

My former husband was also left-handed. Our house was set up for two left-handers, our left-handed scissors and corkscrew and ladles and various arrangements were inconvenient and clumsy-making for right-handers. It gave them a small taste of what our experiences were in the outside world.
jakdin

I couldn’t disagree more on this topic. I’m a natural lefty. I’m hardly ever stressed, hate lists, hate color coordination…maybe my brain actually has learned to cope with reality, it might be smart that way.
Minvaren

#9 – the US military seemed to have the same thing going in the 1970s with their children.

#11 – you might have been one of us “switched” sort of folks.
Roy Trumbull

I’ve never felt it hurt me not to be cock sure of everything.
Hand writing awful? I learned typing at an early age and it paid off bigtime.
I’m more inclined to read and listen and find the real experts.
PDA in the pocket? Yep.
Like solving problems? It paid the bills for all my working years. I had the patience to concentrate on the answer.
elfajio

#20

Yeah, I remember coming home from school with ink smears all over my left pinkie. Still do.

I do everything lefty apart from scissors.
Cupcake Faerie

Left handed, somewhat shy, musician, “Neptunian” (aka believer in Blake’s dictum: “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”),Do not criticism on the job all that well, and I love to color code my Gmail and Google calendar !