Mind Hacks

Hack #68. Test Your Handedness

We all have a hand preference when undertaking manual tasks. But why is this so? And do you always prefer the same hand, or does it vary with what you are doing? Does the way people vary their hand preference differ between right- and left-handers?

The world is a right-handed one, as will be obvious to left-handers. Most tools are made for right-handed people. Implements such as scissors, knives, coffee pots, and so on are all constructed for the right-handed majority. In consequence, the accident rate for left-handers is higher than for right—and not just in tool use; the rate of traffic fatalities among left-handers is also greater than for right. ¹

The word “sinister,” which now means “ill-omened,” originally meant “left-handed.” The corresponding word for “right-handed” is “dexter,” from which we get the word “dexterous.”

—T.S.

Nine out of 10 people are right-handed. ² The proportion appears to have been stable over thousands of years and across all cultures in which handedness has been examined. Anthropologists have been able to determine the incidence of handedness in ancient cultures by examining artifacts, such as the shape of flint axes. Based on evidence like this and other evidence such as writing about handedness in antiquity, our species appears always to have been a predominantly right-handed one.

But even right-handers vary in just how right-handed they are, and this variation may have a link to how you use the different sides of your brain ...