The Puzzle of Left-Handedness

by Rik Smits

  At this point we need to ask how far the way in which the youngest and oldest distributed their crosses needs to differ in order to produce the reduction in left-handedness that emerges. The answer is rather surprising: depending on how many double crosses were entered on average, only one in every two or three of the subjects who answered the questionnaire had to move, all told, one cross from left to right. In concrete terms this means that if out of every two or three people there’s one who in the course of a lifetime has switched hands for just one of the ten tasks, the difference is explained away entirely. In fact that person doesn’t even need to switch hands. It’s enough for him to have become less pronounced in his hand preference, so that instead of two crosses he enters one. Given the notion that we mellow with age, this is not at all improbable. Consider too the fact that the average fifteen-year-old is keen to be special and interesting. Left-handedness is out of the ordinary, so you’d be an odd kind of teenager if you didn’t milk it for all it was worth. Once you reach 40, such considerations have come to matter a good deal less.

  38

  Creative, Musical, Brilliant and Famous!

  ‘Is your child left-handed? Then maybe you’re raising a genius’, ran a headline in the British magazine The Listener in 1975. It was one of those articles in which enormous creativity and remarkable artistic gifts are attributed to left-handers, based on the supposed dominance of that emotional, creative right half of the brain. The value of ideas like this is of course only relative, even though they may come as a welcome relief to left-handers after a whole series of negative dictums, an attitude of incomprehension on the part of parents and teachers, and ominous messages à la Stanley Coren. It’s often mentioned that not only the mentally handicapped but geniuses include an unexpectedly large number of left-handers. But what does this mean, if no one knows just how many geniuses the world has produced? People regularly point to famous left-handers of the past, such as Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. In many cases, incidentally, this appeal to genius is based on shifting sand, since an enthusiasm for claiming prominent individuals for the left-hander camp often gets the better of conscientiousness. Bob Dylan is not left-handed, and neither was Picasso, nor a whole string of other celebrated figures. This kind of thing serves no purpose anyhow, since it would be equally justifiable and equally ill-conceived to comfort bald men who have birthmarks with the achievements of Mikhail Gorbachev, disabled people with the success of Stephen Hawking or depressive redheads with the genius of Vincent van Gogh.

  Innumerable well-worn tales are told about architecture colleges and music academies where a fantastically high proportion of left-handers is to be found, and they’re said to get better marks on average too. Anything is possible, but we have no solid data to suggest left-handedness is accompanied by special gifts. Only in two areas do left-handers undeniably have an advantage.

  One is in sports like tennis, baseball, boxing and fencing. But then again, they’re at a disadvantage in games like polo and hockey.

  The other is the us presidency. Bizarrely, that tiny, illustrious company of men includes an improbable number of left-handers. Of the last seven presidents, up to and including Barack Obama, five were left-handed, the exceptions being Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush. The Republican candidate for the 2008 election, John McCain, is also a member of the club, while in 1992 the sitting president, Bush senior, and both his challengers, Bill Clinton and Ross Perot, were left-handed. Still, does this say anything about left-handedness in general? If it does, then it can’t be anything particularly complimentary, since nice people could never hope to triumph in the ruthless contest that is the race for the American presidency. We’re talking here about such an exceptional group of people anyhow that it’s safe to assume little can be deduced from the statistics.

  Left-handers seem, as far as we can tell, simply to be left-handed. In a predominantly right-handed world they are generally presented with misleading examples to follow, unhelpful instructions and less than optimal tools. In many ways this throws them back on their own resources from a young age. Perhaps left-handed people should at least be allowed to flatter themselves with the thought that they’re more independent than average.

  Charlie Chaplin playing the cello with his left hand, c. 1915.

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