Left-Handers - more inhibited.

Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.

yenrod

Guest
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tayside_and_central/7708054.stm

People who are left-handed are more likely to get anxious or feel shy or embarrassed about doing or saying what they want, according to new research.

Those involved in the Abertay University study were given a behavioural test that gauges personal restraint and impulsiveness.

Researchers found left-handers tended to agree more with statements such as "I worry about making mistakes."

They also agreed that "criticism or scolding hurts me quite a bit."

In total, 46 left-handed people were compared with 66 right-handers.

'Wiring differences'

The left-handers scored higher when it came to inhibition, especially when a situation was new or unusual. Women were also more held back than men.

All groups responded similarly to statements such as: "I often act on the spur of the moment" and "I crave excitement and new sensations."

Dr Lynn Wright, who led the study in Dundee, believes the results could be due to wiring differences in the brains of left and right-handers.

"Left-handers are more likely to hesitate whereas right-handers tend to jump in a bit more," she said.

"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."
 

ianrauk

Tattooed Beat Messiah
Location
Rides Ti2
My wife is left handed. And she can be a right cow sometimes... so they can add that to the above
 

robgul

Legendary Member
"In total, 46 left-handed people were compared with 66 right-handers. "

- is this likely to be statistically balanced ?

... I would have thought that the sample should have been based on numbers that equate to the percentage of people that are left or right-handed ... the figures quoted would seem to slew the results with a larger proportion of left-handers than the norm.

From memory the ratio is about 10 or 11% of people are left-handed.

Rob
 

Yellow Fang

Legendary Member
Location
Reading
Abertay University must be quite annoyed that they don't come first in the alphabet. They come after Aberdeen University, but at least the come before Aberwrystwth.
 

Arch

Married to Night Train
Location
Salford, UK
robgul said:
"In total, 46 left-handed people were compared with 66 right-handers. "

- is this likely to be statistically balanced ?

... I would have thought that the sample should have been based on numbers that equate to the percentage of people that are left or right-handed ... the figures quoted would seem to slew the results with a larger proportion of left-handers than the norm.

From memory the ratio is about 10 or 11% of people are left-handed.

Rob

No, I don't think so. As long as the sample sizes are large enough to be statistically valid (and those are), the result should be fine.

I have no way of knowing whether the proportion of sheep to cows in my database of archaeological animal bone remains equals the proportion of sheep to cows in Medieval England, and that doesn't matter.

The study is about a feature of each person, and whether that is linked to their handedness, which has nothing to do with their relative proportions in the population.
 

Yellow Fang

Legendary Member
Location
Reading
There seemed to be a surprising number of left handed engineers at my last company, and none of them seemed particularly inhibited, so far as I can remember.
 

Arch

Married to Night Train
Location
Salford, UK
Aperitif said:
Can you tell if someone was left or right handed when examining a skeleton Arch? (Soco / CSI question time to our resident expert :biggrin: )

Only if they used one arm habitually to do something requiring a lot of force - in which case it might be possible to see more robust muscle attachments. It is sometimes possible to see, for example, when a man might have been an archer, due to the fact that they tend to have a more strongly developed forearm in the arm that held and braced the bow (and I forget for the moment which that generally is, the left I think).

But for stuff like writing or everyday living tasks, then no, it' unlikely to be clear - there is natural variation between sides anyway, so I don't think smaller differences in muscle use would show up.
 
I thought the real test of whether one is left or right handed as a male is whether you "hang the right way" or not. ie in LH men the Right hand testicle is lower while in RH men the Left is lower.
 

Andy

New Member
I'm left handed, I write, eat, play tennis, squash and kick a ball left handed/footed (not all at the same time you understand although it does paint an interesting picture :biggrin:) but play golf, used to play cricket right handed. I also ride a bike right handed :sad:, does that me totally unique or just daft?

Don't answer that. :smile:;)

I suppose that I am a bit introverted, I mean I'd hate to think that anyone would be reading this nonsense, especially people that I didn't know!
 
Top Bottom