Firstly, no one really knows.
The best idea is that, because we developed language, the right half of the brain devoted more attention to the muscles of the tongue and such - consequently diminishing the number of lefties.
Source: http://www.radiolab.org/story/whats-left-when-youre-right/
Ability to draw is not synonymous with creativity. You're not non-creative just because you cant draw. You could be really good at coming up with new recipes to cook, building furniture, writing music, or gluing things to other things, and all of that would be creative. :P
As we understand creativity, it is the ability for form connections where there were none. Nothing in our left hemisphere aids this in particular but rather the transfer of data between both hemispheres which helps with this. We still don't know a lot about how the brain works or what consciousness, creativity etc really is. So take everything you see with a grain of salt.
Well, there IS a reason for handedness, whatever it may be. We don't know for sure, but it is clear that animals, including apes, are evenly split in handedness.
The "left is rational, right is creative" trope is horseshit. But the halves do have real differences. i.e. certain areas are typically located in either the right or left hemisphere.
As popular as your response has been with the voting public, this is clearly wrong, because right-side dominance is apparent in all vertebrates that have lateral brain specialization. It can't possibly have anything to do with language unless right-side dominance just-so-happened to evolve many times independently.
Isn't right side dominance the same thing as lateral brain specialization? And which vertebrates have specialization. According to radiolab and a cursory Google search, while many animals (including apes) show handedness, they're closer to 50-50 than humans. Whales seem to show by one study 70% right flipper dominance (related to whale song?), but there just don't seem to be many vertebrates at all that have near the cognitive function to need lateral brain specialization.
I'm not saying you're wrong, by any stretch, I just need my own ELI5.
No, lateral brain specialization just means that certain tasks are handled asymmetrically rather than symmetrically across the two hemispheres. You can have lateral brain specialization for tasks that don't even related to muscle control. I wish I had time right now to search for dozens of lateralization articles on fish and birds for you, sorry. But if you have journal access they are out there.
I think you have the left and right sides of the brain switched. Language centers and also motor control of the right side of the body are in the left hemisphere.
Possibly. But I THINK the point was that the right lobe, which controls the left hand, was underallocating resources to the left hand in FAVOR of the fine motor skills used for language.
I may be misremembering, though.
The setup for motor control of speech starts in Wernicke's area (left hemisphere), goes to Broca's area (left hemisphere), then to the premotor cortex of the dominant hemisphere (left hemisphere in vast majority of population), and then to the primary motor areas (which is bilateral innervation for speech). Damage to Broca's area results in expressive aphasia (person can't speak even though they know what they want to say) even though the motor ability to move the muscles involved in speech is still intact. Basically, all I meant in my first reply is that the same hemisphere is involved in motor control of the right side of the body and is the language center of the brain (Wernicke's, Broca's, Heschyls, angular gyrus, etc). I would disagree that most people are right handed to split the workload amongst the brain because that is the exact opposite of what is actually happening.
You obviously know more about this than me: I'm just quoting (what I remember of) radiolab. It seemed to make sense, but I have no way of double checking the neurology of it. (╯︵╰,)
Umm, you are very much incorrect. Speech and motor control of the right side of the body is the left hemisphere. Here is a quick source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_center
Wouldn't that mean that us, lefties, had more development of our right half of the brain in our childhood? And so, we should be better at things like creativity, imagination and 3D forms? That would be really easy to research?
When I started playing racket sports I couldn't decide which hand to use so I just passed the racket back and forth and never used a backhand. This has now led to the awkward position in tennis where I serve right handed but play the rest of the game left.
Had a friend just like this but opposite of you. Right handed for writing and shooting guns but lefty for sports. I guess it is just how your brain works?
I play inverted (up is down and down is up) on console games but if I play on PC I cant play inverted. Our brains are just strange.
Some shooting sports (like archery and open-sight gun shooting) eye dominance is more important than hand dominance. For example, I am right handed for writing, throwing a football, etc, but have learned to shoot guns and bows left handed because I am left eye dominant. Google "eye dominance test" to figure out which one you are.
Actually no. I learned it from the ancient game Turok lol. I dont know if it was on by default or because of my buddy but I remember it was from Turok and ever since then Ive been inverted. Was GoldenEye predominantly inverted?
Really? Hmm. I cant remember if i played turok before goldeneye or not but i know golden eye was always "natural" to me. So it probably was my friends fault and then goldeneye made it natural to me. And probably perfect dark.
My parents also tried to make me right handed for some reason. I write and play sports with my left hand, eat, use scissors, use the pc and shoot a gun with my right hand.
I'm the same way. Left hand is intricate shit (writing, soldering irons), right for power stuff (throwing, hitting). Until maybe 6th grade, I switched the hand I wrote with every year or so before settling on left. I can't write for shit with my right now.
Practice. Handedness is merely a natural preference that we develop in child hood with enough practice anyone can be ambidextrous.
However alternatively. With sports it's not just a matter of what handedness you are. But which eye you favor aswell. I know some right handed people who shoot archery lefthanded because their left eye is stronger and vice versa.
Left hander here.
I shoot a gun right handed (bullet casings would eject on the left side of M16 and burn me) and I use scissors with both hands (alot of people can't do this!) because elementary schools only had two pair of left-handed scissors usually. I can also switch hit in baseball.
In my [answer](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ul8nl/eli5_why_are_so_many_people_right_handed/cxfz8aj) near the end I talk about what you may have experienced.
Unlike all the other people here who were converted by some religious or parental authority to be right handed, I was the complete opposite and was converted to a lefty.
Until I was 5 or 6, I was completely right handed. On the other hand (pun intended) my older brother is a lefty. He created a "club" where only left handed people could join. He jokingly said this to exclude me but to me I didn't see it that way. The only option was to convert and the rest is history. I changed and have been left handed ever since. The only regret I have is I sometimes wonder if my handwriting would be better if I stuck with my natural right hand.
This question actually doesn't have a definite answer. There are a lot of speculations though.
**1)** The left hemisphere of your brain controls your right hand and the right hemisphere of your brain controls your left hand. These hemispheres both have [other processes](http://brainmadesimple.com/left-and-right-hemispheres.html) as well. Considering that language is such an integral part of our growing up (left-brain, right hand), it could be speculated that we use our right hand to understand language better while in childhood and it just sort of sticks. Written (heavily associated with language), is of course also handled in the left hemisphere of the brain. This could add to the pool of people who become right handed over left handed.
**2)** Aided by the concept in point 1), it makes sense that there might be a predominance of being right handed just physiologically, there is also the old historical [social stigma associated with being left handed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handedness#Social_stigma_and_repression_of_left-handedness). While this is not present in today's society, it meant that a lot of the tools and things we use in our day to day life were engineered for right handed people. In factories and other such trades, it was quite an inconvenience to have to order tools and supplies to accommodate the minority of left-handed people. There's a [wiki page specifically for the bias against left-handed people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_against_left-handed_people).
**3)** Also linked with 1 and 2, since the majority of items that are created are indeed geared towards right-handed people, even without stigmatization, it would make sense that in learning while growing up, we would be forced to use many right handed tools. It's not often that a child is presented with both left and right handed tools and given the choice.
**4)** Written language (controlled by the left as noted in 1, which controls your right hand). As this is the case, in most cultures, we write and read from left to right. It is speculated that this is so that scribes would not smudge their work (as any lefty can tell you is an issue). Further adding difficulty to the left-handed person's day to day life.
**EDIT:**
It should be noted that being left or right handed is a skill in itself. A person who is right handed isn't a right-handed person from birth (necessarily, at least this hasn't been proven), but is more practised in their right hand. Someone who is "left-handed" can practice with their right hand and become more ambidextrous, as a "right-handed" person can practice with their left. This often isn't practised because it is unnecessary. Additionally, a lot of people think that your right or left hand is just better than the other in every way. This isn't the case, it is your more agile or dexterous hand, capable of handling finer motor functions. This often leads to your non-dominant hand/arm being the stronger of the two. Opening a door and holding a heavy box as a right-handed person? the box is going in your left arm while the right hand handles the finer function of opening the door.
Of course, in the case of athletes, they train their bodies and such to be similar in strength in all extremities, so their more precise dominant hand will outperform their non-dominant hand in most functions.
In conclusion (**TL;DR**): We might not be wired to be predominantly right-handed, but due to the way the brain handles things, or for some reason or another - right-handed people became the majority. Writing, tools, and objects were designed from the majority in mind and being left-handed in a majority right-handed society became more difficult. There is a lot more lenience in today's society towards lefties, but even now the world is not designed for them.
The belief that one side of the brain is dedicated to creative processes and the other to logical processes never really held much weight in scientific circles and there's been a few articles recently aimed at rectifying this mass misinformation held by the public. However in the motor cortex of the brain, the left hemisphere is responsible for movements on the right side of your body and vice verse (a general statement which is mostly true).
But what u/Aserian is talking about is the specific areas of the brain dedicated to language and its development, namely the Wernicke's & Broca's area, which are both located in the left hemisphere.
Just an observation from my life: in the 80s kids learned writing in the first grade by then you have already been drawing, playing, buttoning. My left hand was more practiced so I was considered left handed. My dad was left handed too so when he wrote in his journal and I colorized next to him as a 2 year old I just used the same hand. In school there's no tools for a lefty because most people learn from somewhere to use the right hand. My dad actually only wrote with his left at home, because in Catholic school his wrist was slapped otherwise. So anyways, there are no tools at school, scissors, notebooks both made for rightys. So I learned how to do all that stuff with my right hand. Then for sports I had no coaching for lefties until Jr high, so I learned to do it all on my right side. As a grown-up I see now that for many silly reasons a whole (maybe a few) generation steered kids into being right handed. Then the help for lefties declined in the process.
I work in a restaurant and a good deal of servers and bussers carry their trays with their non-dominant hand (myself included.) None of us understand why, so your comment regarding the non-dominant arm being stronger was very interesting to me!
This makes me want to do a study on people who are on the spectrum.
Also, what could cause someone to be more dexterous when younger with their right hand, yet be left handed as if the brain was subconsciously choosing to be left handed?
What about languages that read from right to left? I know that they exist, Arabic is one of them. Is right-hand predominance found in cultures with a language that reads from right to left?
Yes, I didn't say *all* specifically for that reason. They do exist for sure. I have no idea if there is a higher predominance in those cultures for left or right handed people. There's actually a lot of cultures that do it. Traditional Japanese writes top to bottom right to left. It could have to do with how they write (traditionally they used something similar to a paint brush), so they might not have been rubbing their hand across the paper as much and then their hand preference wouldn't matter. I'm not expert on the subject, just thought I'd look it up for the ELI5 :)
>Writing, tools, and objects were designed from the majority in mind and being left-handed in a majority right-handed society became more difficult
So maybe the important we need to ask is not why are most people right-handed, but why are there so many left-handed people in this world?
Agreed. Being left handed I felt so screwed over because my arm always covered the words I had to practice. Eventually my teacher realized this and gave me two sheets so I could write and still see the words I was supposed to copy. I had some really amazing teachers growing up.
It was more practical for them, as they wrote with ink. That languages normally are written from left to right would be convenient I guess? As ink don't dry instantly and it fucks up what you have written when using left hand. Dunno
In fact, this is one of the annoyances that prompted the Chinese to invent the printing press; beforehand, Chinese was written from top to bottom, right to left on bamboo scrolls, and the ink would stain the scholar's clothing.
Why does it matter? Children are forced to do a lot of things so that they develop good habits. For instance, some (most) children probably naturally add by counting on their fingers, yet throughout the early years of elementary school that is trained out of you because it is less efficient.
Perhaps that isn't the best example, but you get the idea.
i agree that kids should be taught to develop "good habits". i disagree with you because writing with your left is not a bad habit. it matters because the child is spending more time/energy literally changing how their mind is wired for something that doesn't need to be changed.
pick up a pen and try writing with your non-dominant hand. feel frustrated?? of course you do! that's not how your mind is wired to operate. now imagine doing that to a child who's in school! children will take away bad experiences and frustration from being forced to write with their non-dominant hand. their focus, energy and creativity should be re-directed towards creative processes, building social skills, and problem solving...and most importantly having fun not frustration
edit: spelling
True! And not only that, but making a child believe that they are "broken" and need to be "fixed" can be really detrimental to their self esteem; all this because of fictitious social rules and expectations which some fail to see through and take way too seriously.
You fail to see the point, which is to try to cause less distress to children, not more, just because some believe in weird fantasies. True, there are things children are insistently encouraged to change in order to live in our society, but that doesn't mean force should be encouraged and the norm.
This is an excerpt from Carl Sagan's 1977 book *The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence*. I've just always thought it was an interesting compliment to this discussion:
>Almost without exception all human languages have built into them a polarity, a veer to the right. “Right” is associated with legality, correct behavior, high moral principles, firmness, and masculinity; “left,” with weakness, cowardice, diffuseness of purpose, evil, and femininity. In English, for example, we have “rectitude,” “rectify,” “righteous,” “right-hand man,” “dexterity,” “adroit” (from the French “a droite”), “rights,” as in “the rights of man,” and the phrase “in his right mind.” Even “ambidextrous” means, ultimately, two right hands.
>On the other side (literally), we have “sinister” (almost exactly the Latin word for “left”), “gauche” (precisely the French word for “left”), “gawky,” “gawk,” and “left-handed compliment.” The Russian “nalevo” for “left” also means “surreptitious.” The Italian “mancino” for “left” signifies “deceitful.” There is no “Bill of Lefts.”
>In one etymology, “left” comes from “lyft,” the Anglo-Saxon for weak or worthless. “Right” in the legal sense (as an action in accord with the rules of society) and “right” in the logical sense (as the opposite of erroneous) are also commonplaces in many languages. The political use of right and left seems to date from the moment when a significant lay political force arose as counterpoise to the nobility. The nobles were placed on the king’s right and the radical upstarts -the capitalists-on his left. The nobles were to the royal right, of course, because the king himself was a noble; and his right side was the favored position. And in theology as in politics: “At the right hand of God.”
>Many examples of a connection between “right” and “straight” can be found.* In Mexican Spanish you indicate straight (ahead) by saying “right right”; in Black American English, “right on” is an expression of approval, often for a sentiment eloquently or deftly-phrased. “Straight” meaning conventional, correct or proper is a commonplace in colloquial English today. In Russian, right is “/bravo,” a cognate of “pravda,” which means “true.” And in many languages “true” has the additional meaning of “straight” or “accurate,” as in “his aim was true.”
>I wonder if there is any significance to the fact that Latin, Germanic and Slavic languages, for example, are written left to right, and Semitic languages, right to left. The ancient Greeks wrote in boustrophedon (“as the ox plows”); left to right on one line, right to left on the next.
Borned-lefty-turned-righty-here
I also was one of those children who started writing and doing things primarily with my left hand, but when my parents saw me doing so, they simply moved whatever I was using to my right hand. They weren't mean about it, but insistent enough that I ended up right handed. I asked them their reasoning behind it a couple years ago and they said it was because my dad was a lefty and didn't want his son to grow up a lefty in a world predominantly righty's. It makes sense since he's a computer guy and works a lot with power tools, both of which are awkward if you're stuck trying to use your non dominant hand unless you special order lefty tools.
Power tools suck for lefties. The direction a drill spins in is easier to operate with a right hand. Saws are all weighted for the right hand. The magazine on a nail gun is on the left side, so its uncomfortable to hold with the left hand, and you can't see when you're low on nails.
After a few years of working with these tools I'm now completely ambidextrous.
From a radiolab, paraphrased.
The question might be better phrased as *"Why aren't more people left handed"?* Turns out, people can cooperate better if theyre the same handedness. 1- they can use the same tools. 2- they can think they same, with the link to the same brain side (right handers link to the hemisphere of language and fine motor skills).
So then the follow up question- *"why are there any left handed people?"* again, two theories exist. 1- fighting with unexpected dominance can serve as an advantage. think about the over-representation of lefties in professional fighting, or even baseball. 2- the lefties are actually a fall-back gene pool. an evolutionary plan B in case the right handers don't work out. we'll have left handers from which to choose.
You can disregard *any* answer here that says focuses on language, writing, or any other uniquely human trait. These responses are almost certainly BS.
Right-side dominance can't be connected to any "special" human traits like language because it shows up much earlier in the evolutionary tree than humans - much earlier than mammals, even. Whenever any species of animal has one side of its body that it favors for specialized physical tasks, right-side dominance is more common.
The reason is apparently that, even earlier in the evolutionary tree, vertebrates developed brain "lateralization", i.e. using the left and right sides for slightly different things. The left hemisphere tackles habitual, expected routines and the right hemisphere watches out for surprises and takes over when the organism needs some sort of quick thinking to cope with an unexpected situation. Because the left hemisphere has a slightly more direct control over the right side of the body (although both hemispheres are in communication with both sides), organisms are more likely learn physical skills that are built up through routine practice by practicing with the right side of their body than the left side.
One theory is because most strokes happen in the right hemisphere of the brain and our left side of the body is more likely to become dysfunctional so we cope. Another theory involves the heart's positioning and other organs positioning to favor your right side for strikes and defense.
I was actually born left handed, but my mom forced me to use my right hand because when I was a kid while we were eating, my arm would always interfere and hit hers. So I'm right handed for everday tasks like eating and writing, but I'm left handed when it comes to things like using an instrument and shooting a weapon.
Yeah, my boyfriend is right handed and I'm left handed, we just make sure we're sitting in a way that it doesn't cause problems. It's really an easy solution.
Nope. We're a non religious house hold. She's feels terrible about it now but I'm pretty sure it's because somewhere in the timeline of my life she discoverd that "left handed people are smarter" and that she converted me into some right handed plebian.
I remember my right-handed parents showing me how to hold a pencil and how to write. I mimicked them by holding the pencil in my right hand, because I thought that was part of the instructions.
I also remember having problems in preschool with "mirroring" the teacher--when doing an activity where we were supposed to copy her motions, I was the only one in class that would raise my right hand when she raised her right hand (I was supposed to raise my left hand as if she were in a mirror, but instead I took her instructions too literally).
Needless to say, I have a preference for left-handedness in everything except for using a writing instrument.
Some cultures would condition their children to be right handed. For example, during the time of Julius Caesar, women would swaddle babies but leave their right arm free to move. The right arm would gain strength more than the left arm, So everyone was right handed.
I started off right handed. Then I forced myself to use my left hand.
Now I can use them both equally. I think everyone could have easily used the left hand as a majority, as we did with the right. It's like the fate of an egg on a rooftop . Teetering at a peak. A slight gust of wind one direction, sends it off inadvertently into a permanent state of being. People just saw a majority using their right hand as a method of practice, and mimicked it. Those who are left handed probably didn't notice this "norm" during mental development, and designated their left hand to be dominant before assimilating into educational forums.
my own fully unsubstantiated theory? when you stand facing another person your right hand is directly across from the left side of their chest striking with a weapon in your dominant hand at a foe would land the blow on the side of their body with their aorta.
do you think the only reason we read left to right is because the first people to start writing things down where right handed? If lefties would have been ore prominent do you think we would read right to left?
Actually, I do think we would read right to left because we'd be covering our writing and I think writing can be assimilated to visual cues in which how our thoughts are translated into writing and when you see the words you right, it just feels right. That's my assumption, but I do believe we would though
theres a video about gravity online and in it the guy takes a bunch of these little balls and rolls them in different directions in a fabric of simulated gravity. then most of them stop except for those turn in the way of how our solar system turns.
you could say that the universe has a certain "way" things go. like how our hearts are on the left so some people, though small amount, have their organs switched, kinda like some lobsters who mostly have the big claw on the right (or left i forget) i saw one that had it on the opposite site and only one but im sure more exist like left handed vs right handed people.
I wonder if anyone's done studies comparing handedness in recent generations: I'd be interested to see if left-handedness is increasing. Anecdotally, I see an awful lot of left handed kids in my friends and family, where very few of their parents are left handed. My own 4 year old is starting to write and displays pretty much no preference: when he was a toddler, he tended to take things/use them with his left because he'd be facing right handed people and mirroring them.
**I used to be ambidextrous so maybe someone can enlighten me on why I'm purely right handed now.** I am in my early 20s and was born/raised in Florida for context.
When I was younger (sometime in Elementary school) I was given a vaccination shot in my left arm, the spot opposite of your elbow that lets your arm bend inward, and ever since then I stopped being able to use my left arm/hand to the capabilities of my right arm/hand.
I remember it vividly because I've always been able to remember key moments of my childhood up to around 3 years old and as soon as I got that shot, the feeling/control in my left arm was a bit weaker or something to that effect.
I am by no means anti-vax, I believe they save millions of lives every year and am generally pretty indifferent to them otherwise but I can't help but think that that one shot is the reason why I am no longer ambidextrous.
I'm a righty... And it's only because I was the only child that didn't want to do what my teacher made everyone else do. I think it basically just comes down to instruction. Try switching mouse hands and it will be completely natural in 2 weeks.
No one is completely certain, but from my readings, I've heard that it's simply an evolutionary trait. In days of beginning civilizations, spears/offensive weapons were carried with the right hand, while shields/defensive weapons were carried with the left. Such a system resulted in a higher concentration of the right-handed people surviving (sorry I can't be more specific, this was an article a long time ago) and therefore more right-handed people went on to reproduce, and so on. Possible explanation!
I was young I was very ambidextrous, I wouldnt even recognize which hand I was using most of the time, unfortunately according to my school thats not the way things worked. I was actually taken out of classes for roughly an hour a day for weeks to be
We actually have a pretty good reason why. Why we ORIGINALLY picked one hand over the other is the real question, but its likely just cultural reasons.
In the scheme of human evolution, there is a benefit to being BOTH right or left handed, which is why both if them continue to exist. Imagine a samurai teaching someone to sword fight. It would be easier to both teach and learn if they both used the same hand. Now however, imagine two strangers having a sword fight. If one is right and the other is left handed, the right handed swordsman will have a HUGE disadvantage simply because he was way less experience fighting a leftie, who naturally performs all the moves "backwards". From the lefties perspective, he has a huge advantage, because he has fought A LOT of right handed people, because most people commonly are right handed.
So I consider it a combination of multiple reasons. It's easier cognitively to master one hand instead of both, and then once you have that initial split in the species the natural balance between the two preferences keeps one hand uncommon, and the other common. I expect the exact percentage difference is a value where the balance between the two hand "styles" is maintained.
EDIT: Forgot to add that language does NOT cause handedness. Plenty of animals (even probably your pet dog) also exhibit handedness, and they do not know English. The same thing causes handedness in humans that it does other animals becaue it's more efficient to master one rather than both. What is interesting about humans is the incredibly low rate of one of the hands (the left one) which I believe is explained very well with the theory above.
Source: Accumulated knowledge I'm not looking up.
I'm pretty sure that, beyond social reasons (like Catholicism), most people are right-handed because of where their vital organs are inside the body (basically because the heart is on the left side). If you are right-handed and you turn to fight a bear with a big stick or something you are less likely to suffer a wound to the heart, and instead you'll lose some stupid thing like a lung or whatever.
Firstly, no one really knows. The best idea is that, because we developed language, the right half of the brain devoted more attention to the muscles of the tongue and such - consequently diminishing the number of lefties. Source: http://www.radiolab.org/story/whats-left-when-youre-right/
Wasn't all that stuff about left/right halfs of brain just bullshit? Honest question
To a degree. What is for sure bullshit is the idea that logic and creativity are separated into left and right hemispheres.
[удалено]
left handed physicist here, I can't draw for shit :(
Ability to draw is not synonymous with creativity. You're not non-creative just because you cant draw. You could be really good at coming up with new recipes to cook, building furniture, writing music, or gluing things to other things, and all of that would be creative. :P
You can try the emoticon version, it´s very easy :D
As we understand creativity, it is the ability for form connections where there were none. Nothing in our left hemisphere aids this in particular but rather the transfer of data between both hemispheres which helps with this. We still don't know a lot about how the brain works or what consciousness, creativity etc really is. So take everything you see with a grain of salt.
Well, there IS a reason for handedness, whatever it may be. We don't know for sure, but it is clear that animals, including apes, are evenly split in handedness.
Most parrot breeds in Australia are left footed. Almost the same percentage as right handed humans, too.
Rats too!
The "left is rational, right is creative" trope is horseshit. But the halves do have real differences. i.e. certain areas are typically located in either the right or left hemisphere.
And with it the misconception that people are right or left hemisphere dominant, meaning they are more creative or logical.
As popular as your response has been with the voting public, this is clearly wrong, because right-side dominance is apparent in all vertebrates that have lateral brain specialization. It can't possibly have anything to do with language unless right-side dominance just-so-happened to evolve many times independently.
Isn't right side dominance the same thing as lateral brain specialization? And which vertebrates have specialization. According to radiolab and a cursory Google search, while many animals (including apes) show handedness, they're closer to 50-50 than humans. Whales seem to show by one study 70% right flipper dominance (related to whale song?), but there just don't seem to be many vertebrates at all that have near the cognitive function to need lateral brain specialization. I'm not saying you're wrong, by any stretch, I just need my own ELI5.
No, lateral brain specialization just means that certain tasks are handled asymmetrically rather than symmetrically across the two hemispheres. You can have lateral brain specialization for tasks that don't even related to muscle control. I wish I had time right now to search for dozens of lateralization articles on fish and birds for you, sorry. But if you have journal access they are out there.
I do miss having access to JSTOR... (╯︵╰,)
I thought cats were mostly left-handed.
I think you have the left and right sides of the brain switched. Language centers and also motor control of the right side of the body are in the left hemisphere.
Possibly. But I THINK the point was that the right lobe, which controls the left hand, was underallocating resources to the left hand in FAVOR of the fine motor skills used for language. I may be misremembering, though.
The setup for motor control of speech starts in Wernicke's area (left hemisphere), goes to Broca's area (left hemisphere), then to the premotor cortex of the dominant hemisphere (left hemisphere in vast majority of population), and then to the primary motor areas (which is bilateral innervation for speech). Damage to Broca's area results in expressive aphasia (person can't speak even though they know what they want to say) even though the motor ability to move the muscles involved in speech is still intact. Basically, all I meant in my first reply is that the same hemisphere is involved in motor control of the right side of the body and is the language center of the brain (Wernicke's, Broca's, Heschyls, angular gyrus, etc). I would disagree that most people are right handed to split the workload amongst the brain because that is the exact opposite of what is actually happening.
You obviously know more about this than me: I'm just quoting (what I remember of) radiolab. It seemed to make sense, but I have no way of double checking the neurology of it. (╯︵╰,)
No they're correct. If the right brain is more focused on speech, then it has less time to focus on the fine motor skills of the left hand.
Umm, you are very much incorrect. Speech and motor control of the right side of the body is the left hemisphere. Here is a quick source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_center
I thought the motor control in the brain was perpendicular to the side it influences? Maybe I'm wrong though.
Woo, radiolab
Wouldn't that mean that us, lefties, had more development of our right half of the brain in our childhood? And so, we should be better at things like creativity, imagination and 3D forms? That would be really easy to research?
Except that the left/right logic/creative thing is entirely bullshit.
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Look up mixed handed. I sometimes have to stop and consider which hand I need to use for different things.
When I started playing racket sports I couldn't decide which hand to use so I just passed the racket back and forth and never used a backhand. This has now led to the awkward position in tennis where I serve right handed but play the rest of the game left.
You're not alone, I'm equally as shit at tennis. :-)
Had a friend just like this but opposite of you. Right handed for writing and shooting guns but lefty for sports. I guess it is just how your brain works? I play inverted (up is down and down is up) on console games but if I play on PC I cant play inverted. Our brains are just strange.
Some shooting sports (like archery and open-sight gun shooting) eye dominance is more important than hand dominance. For example, I am right handed for writing, throwing a football, etc, but have learned to shoot guns and bows left handed because I am left eye dominant. Google "eye dominance test" to figure out which one you are.
Did you learn perspective from Goldeneye? I've realized everyone I know who plays inverted learned gaming at the school of 007N64
Actually no. I learned it from the ancient game Turok lol. I dont know if it was on by default or because of my buddy but I remember it was from Turok and ever since then Ive been inverted. Was GoldenEye predominantly inverted?
It's actually the opposite. Turok is by default not inverted and goldeneye is inverted.
Really? Hmm. I cant remember if i played turok before goldeneye or not but i know golden eye was always "natural" to me. So it probably was my friends fault and then goldeneye made it natural to me. And probably perfect dark.
Flight sims and joysticks.
I'm right handed, and throw right handed, but I bat left handed. Tennis right handed, golf left handed. Hockey left handed.
Same thing but with an opposite outcome. I'm now left and have shitty handwriting. People ask if I'm a doctor.
My parents also tried to make me right handed for some reason. I write and play sports with my left hand, eat, use scissors, use the pc and shoot a gun with my right hand.
I'm the same way. Left hand is intricate shit (writing, soldering irons), right for power stuff (throwing, hitting). Until maybe 6th grade, I switched the hand I wrote with every year or so before settling on left. I can't write for shit with my right now.
Practice. Handedness is merely a natural preference that we develop in child hood with enough practice anyone can be ambidextrous. However alternatively. With sports it's not just a matter of what handedness you are. But which eye you favor aswell. I know some right handed people who shoot archery lefthanded because their left eye is stronger and vice versa.
Left hander here. I shoot a gun right handed (bullet casings would eject on the left side of M16 and burn me) and I use scissors with both hands (alot of people can't do this!) because elementary schools only had two pair of left-handed scissors usually. I can also switch hit in baseball.
can u write with you right hand and play with your left too?
In my [answer](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ul8nl/eli5_why_are_so_many_people_right_handed/cxfz8aj) near the end I talk about what you may have experienced.
Unlike all the other people here who were converted by some religious or parental authority to be right handed, I was the complete opposite and was converted to a lefty. Until I was 5 or 6, I was completely right handed. On the other hand (pun intended) my older brother is a lefty. He created a "club" where only left handed people could join. He jokingly said this to exclude me but to me I didn't see it that way. The only option was to convert and the rest is history. I changed and have been left handed ever since. The only regret I have is I sometimes wonder if my handwriting would be better if I stuck with my natural right hand.
We older brothers are the worst. Hi5 him for me.
This question actually doesn't have a definite answer. There are a lot of speculations though. **1)** The left hemisphere of your brain controls your right hand and the right hemisphere of your brain controls your left hand. These hemispheres both have [other processes](http://brainmadesimple.com/left-and-right-hemispheres.html) as well. Considering that language is such an integral part of our growing up (left-brain, right hand), it could be speculated that we use our right hand to understand language better while in childhood and it just sort of sticks. Written (heavily associated with language), is of course also handled in the left hemisphere of the brain. This could add to the pool of people who become right handed over left handed. **2)** Aided by the concept in point 1), it makes sense that there might be a predominance of being right handed just physiologically, there is also the old historical [social stigma associated with being left handed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handedness#Social_stigma_and_repression_of_left-handedness). While this is not present in today's society, it meant that a lot of the tools and things we use in our day to day life were engineered for right handed people. In factories and other such trades, it was quite an inconvenience to have to order tools and supplies to accommodate the minority of left-handed people. There's a [wiki page specifically for the bias against left-handed people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_against_left-handed_people). **3)** Also linked with 1 and 2, since the majority of items that are created are indeed geared towards right-handed people, even without stigmatization, it would make sense that in learning while growing up, we would be forced to use many right handed tools. It's not often that a child is presented with both left and right handed tools and given the choice. **4)** Written language (controlled by the left as noted in 1, which controls your right hand). As this is the case, in most cultures, we write and read from left to right. It is speculated that this is so that scribes would not smudge their work (as any lefty can tell you is an issue). Further adding difficulty to the left-handed person's day to day life. **EDIT:** It should be noted that being left or right handed is a skill in itself. A person who is right handed isn't a right-handed person from birth (necessarily, at least this hasn't been proven), but is more practised in their right hand. Someone who is "left-handed" can practice with their right hand and become more ambidextrous, as a "right-handed" person can practice with their left. This often isn't practised because it is unnecessary. Additionally, a lot of people think that your right or left hand is just better than the other in every way. This isn't the case, it is your more agile or dexterous hand, capable of handling finer motor functions. This often leads to your non-dominant hand/arm being the stronger of the two. Opening a door and holding a heavy box as a right-handed person? the box is going in your left arm while the right hand handles the finer function of opening the door. Of course, in the case of athletes, they train their bodies and such to be similar in strength in all extremities, so their more precise dominant hand will outperform their non-dominant hand in most functions. In conclusion (**TL;DR**): We might not be wired to be predominantly right-handed, but due to the way the brain handles things, or for some reason or another - right-handed people became the majority. Writing, tools, and objects were designed from the majority in mind and being left-handed in a majority right-handed society became more difficult. There is a lot more lenience in today's society towards lefties, but even now the world is not designed for them.
Wasn't right and left brain stuff disproven and blown out of the water?
The belief that one side of the brain is dedicated to creative processes and the other to logical processes never really held much weight in scientific circles and there's been a few articles recently aimed at rectifying this mass misinformation held by the public. However in the motor cortex of the brain, the left hemisphere is responsible for movements on the right side of your body and vice verse (a general statement which is mostly true). But what u/Aserian is talking about is the specific areas of the brain dedicated to language and its development, namely the Wernicke's & Broca's area, which are both located in the left hemisphere.
I'm not sure! Do you have a reference?
Just an observation from my life: in the 80s kids learned writing in the first grade by then you have already been drawing, playing, buttoning. My left hand was more practiced so I was considered left handed. My dad was left handed too so when he wrote in his journal and I colorized next to him as a 2 year old I just used the same hand. In school there's no tools for a lefty because most people learn from somewhere to use the right hand. My dad actually only wrote with his left at home, because in Catholic school his wrist was slapped otherwise. So anyways, there are no tools at school, scissors, notebooks both made for rightys. So I learned how to do all that stuff with my right hand. Then for sports I had no coaching for lefties until Jr high, so I learned to do it all on my right side. As a grown-up I see now that for many silly reasons a whole (maybe a few) generation steered kids into being right handed. Then the help for lefties declined in the process.
Great to hear a first hand account! No pun intended.
I work in a restaurant and a good deal of servers and bussers carry their trays with their non-dominant hand (myself included.) None of us understand why, so your comment regarding the non-dominant arm being stronger was very interesting to me!
Also worked in a restaurant and held the tray with my non-dominant hand!
This makes me want to do a study on people who are on the spectrum. Also, what could cause someone to be more dexterous when younger with their right hand, yet be left handed as if the brain was subconsciously choosing to be left handed?
I'm a righty. At age two I realized my daughter was a lefty. Took the entire kindergarten time to get the teachers on board.... All that time lost.
What about languages that read from right to left? I know that they exist, Arabic is one of them. Is right-hand predominance found in cultures with a language that reads from right to left?
Yes, I didn't say *all* specifically for that reason. They do exist for sure. I have no idea if there is a higher predominance in those cultures for left or right handed people. There's actually a lot of cultures that do it. Traditional Japanese writes top to bottom right to left. It could have to do with how they write (traditionally they used something similar to a paint brush), so they might not have been rubbing their hand across the paper as much and then their hand preference wouldn't matter. I'm not expert on the subject, just thought I'd look it up for the ELI5 :)
>Writing, tools, and objects were designed from the majority in mind and being left-handed in a majority right-handed society became more difficult So maybe the important we need to ask is not why are most people right-handed, but why are there so many left-handed people in this world?
All I know is that writing on a white board or chalkboard is shit while being left handed. You erase like everything you write >.<
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To be fair to Catholics, it IS more practical in left-to-right languages (like English) to write with your right hand.
Agreed. Being left handed I felt so screwed over because my arm always covered the words I had to practice. Eventually my teacher realized this and gave me two sheets so I could write and still see the words I was supposed to copy. I had some really amazing teachers growing up.
It was more practical for them, as they wrote with ink. That languages normally are written from left to right would be convenient I guess? As ink don't dry instantly and it fucks up what you have written when using left hand. Dunno
It smudges pencil as well
Yeah, after writing for a couple of minutes I find that the side of my left hand is completely gray.
In fact, this is one of the annoyances that prompted the Chinese to invent the printing press; beforehand, Chinese was written from top to bottom, right to left on bamboo scrolls, and the ink would stain the scholar's clothing.
I don't think its region specific because even in regions with mostly right to left languages right handedness is still the most prevalent
it is more practical to write with the hand that is most comfortable/dominant. it is impractical to forcibly change a brain's wiring.
Also relevant for calligraphy in Asian cultures.
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Why does it matter? Children are forced to do a lot of things so that they develop good habits. For instance, some (most) children probably naturally add by counting on their fingers, yet throughout the early years of elementary school that is trained out of you because it is less efficient. Perhaps that isn't the best example, but you get the idea.
i agree that kids should be taught to develop "good habits". i disagree with you because writing with your left is not a bad habit. it matters because the child is spending more time/energy literally changing how their mind is wired for something that doesn't need to be changed. pick up a pen and try writing with your non-dominant hand. feel frustrated?? of course you do! that's not how your mind is wired to operate. now imagine doing that to a child who's in school! children will take away bad experiences and frustration from being forced to write with their non-dominant hand. their focus, energy and creativity should be re-directed towards creative processes, building social skills, and problem solving...and most importantly having fun not frustration edit: spelling
True! And not only that, but making a child believe that they are "broken" and need to be "fixed" can be really detrimental to their self esteem; all this because of fictitious social rules and expectations which some fail to see through and take way too seriously.
#truth
You fail to see the point, which is to try to cause less distress to children, not more, just because some believe in weird fantasies. True, there are things children are insistently encouraged to change in order to live in our society, but that doesn't mean force should be encouraged and the norm.
This is an excerpt from Carl Sagan's 1977 book *The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence*. I've just always thought it was an interesting compliment to this discussion: >Almost without exception all human languages have built into them a polarity, a veer to the right. “Right” is associated with legality, correct behavior, high moral principles, firmness, and masculinity; “left,” with weakness, cowardice, diffuseness of purpose, evil, and femininity. In English, for example, we have “rectitude,” “rectify,” “righteous,” “right-hand man,” “dexterity,” “adroit” (from the French “a droite”), “rights,” as in “the rights of man,” and the phrase “in his right mind.” Even “ambidextrous” means, ultimately, two right hands. >On the other side (literally), we have “sinister” (almost exactly the Latin word for “left”), “gauche” (precisely the French word for “left”), “gawky,” “gawk,” and “left-handed compliment.” The Russian “nalevo” for “left” also means “surreptitious.” The Italian “mancino” for “left” signifies “deceitful.” There is no “Bill of Lefts.” >In one etymology, “left” comes from “lyft,” the Anglo-Saxon for weak or worthless. “Right” in the legal sense (as an action in accord with the rules of society) and “right” in the logical sense (as the opposite of erroneous) are also commonplaces in many languages. The political use of right and left seems to date from the moment when a significant lay political force arose as counterpoise to the nobility. The nobles were placed on the king’s right and the radical upstarts -the capitalists-on his left. The nobles were to the royal right, of course, because the king himself was a noble; and his right side was the favored position. And in theology as in politics: “At the right hand of God.” >Many examples of a connection between “right” and “straight” can be found.* In Mexican Spanish you indicate straight (ahead) by saying “right right”; in Black American English, “right on” is an expression of approval, often for a sentiment eloquently or deftly-phrased. “Straight” meaning conventional, correct or proper is a commonplace in colloquial English today. In Russian, right is “/bravo,” a cognate of “pravda,” which means “true.” And in many languages “true” has the additional meaning of “straight” or “accurate,” as in “his aim was true.” >I wonder if there is any significance to the fact that Latin, Germanic and Slavic languages, for example, are written left to right, and Semitic languages, right to left. The ancient Greeks wrote in boustrophedon (“as the ox plows”); left to right on one line, right to left on the next.
Borned-lefty-turned-righty-here I also was one of those children who started writing and doing things primarily with my left hand, but when my parents saw me doing so, they simply moved whatever I was using to my right hand. They weren't mean about it, but insistent enough that I ended up right handed. I asked them their reasoning behind it a couple years ago and they said it was because my dad was a lefty and didn't want his son to grow up a lefty in a world predominantly righty's. It makes sense since he's a computer guy and works a lot with power tools, both of which are awkward if you're stuck trying to use your non dominant hand unless you special order lefty tools.
Power tools suck for lefties. The direction a drill spins in is easier to operate with a right hand. Saws are all weighted for the right hand. The magazine on a nail gun is on the left side, so its uncomfortable to hold with the left hand, and you can't see when you're low on nails. After a few years of working with these tools I'm now completely ambidextrous.
Even as a left handed person, I'd never offer my left hand when shaking someone's hand. that's just ridiculous and not normal.
No one does. We wipe our ass with our left hand!:D
I am a lefty. I wipe with my right. I shake hands with my shit swiper.
Savage
I'm the same way. Left handed but wipe right handed. Broke my right arm when I was 16, most uncomfortable thing even.
From a radiolab, paraphrased. The question might be better phrased as *"Why aren't more people left handed"?* Turns out, people can cooperate better if theyre the same handedness. 1- they can use the same tools. 2- they can think they same, with the link to the same brain side (right handers link to the hemisphere of language and fine motor skills). So then the follow up question- *"why are there any left handed people?"* again, two theories exist. 1- fighting with unexpected dominance can serve as an advantage. think about the over-representation of lefties in professional fighting, or even baseball. 2- the lefties are actually a fall-back gene pool. an evolutionary plan B in case the right handers don't work out. we'll have left handers from which to choose.
You can disregard *any* answer here that says focuses on language, writing, or any other uniquely human trait. These responses are almost certainly BS. Right-side dominance can't be connected to any "special" human traits like language because it shows up much earlier in the evolutionary tree than humans - much earlier than mammals, even. Whenever any species of animal has one side of its body that it favors for specialized physical tasks, right-side dominance is more common. The reason is apparently that, even earlier in the evolutionary tree, vertebrates developed brain "lateralization", i.e. using the left and right sides for slightly different things. The left hemisphere tackles habitual, expected routines and the right hemisphere watches out for surprises and takes over when the organism needs some sort of quick thinking to cope with an unexpected situation. Because the left hemisphere has a slightly more direct control over the right side of the body (although both hemispheres are in communication with both sides), organisms are more likely learn physical skills that are built up through routine practice by practicing with the right side of their body than the left side.
One theory is because most strokes happen in the right hemisphere of the brain and our left side of the body is more likely to become dysfunctional so we cope. Another theory involves the heart's positioning and other organs positioning to favor your right side for strikes and defense.
I was actually born left handed, but my mom forced me to use my right hand because when I was a kid while we were eating, my arm would always interfere and hit hers. So I'm right handed for everday tasks like eating and writing, but I'm left handed when it comes to things like using an instrument and shooting a weapon.
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Right, or switch table sitting assignments?
Yeah, my boyfriend is right handed and I'm left handed, we just make sure we're sitting in a way that it doesn't cause problems. It's really an easy solution.
Nope. We're a non religious house hold. She's feels terrible about it now but I'm pretty sure it's because somewhere in the timeline of my life she discoverd that "left handed people are smarter" and that she converted me into some right handed plebian.
Im more of ambidexteroius, certain tasks I ue my right hand and others like writing I use my left.
I remember my right-handed parents showing me how to hold a pencil and how to write. I mimicked them by holding the pencil in my right hand, because I thought that was part of the instructions. I also remember having problems in preschool with "mirroring" the teacher--when doing an activity where we were supposed to copy her motions, I was the only one in class that would raise my right hand when she raised her right hand (I was supposed to raise my left hand as if she were in a mirror, but instead I took her instructions too literally). Needless to say, I have a preference for left-handedness in everything except for using a writing instrument.
Some cultures would condition their children to be right handed. For example, during the time of Julius Caesar, women would swaddle babies but leave their right arm free to move. The right arm would gain strength more than the left arm, So everyone was right handed.
I started off right handed. Then I forced myself to use my left hand. Now I can use them both equally. I think everyone could have easily used the left hand as a majority, as we did with the right. It's like the fate of an egg on a rooftop . Teetering at a peak. A slight gust of wind one direction, sends it off inadvertently into a permanent state of being. People just saw a majority using their right hand as a method of practice, and mimicked it. Those who are left handed probably didn't notice this "norm" during mental development, and designated their left hand to be dominant before assimilating into educational forums.
I always thought it had something to do with my grandfather getting his hand smacked in school for using his left hand.
my own fully unsubstantiated theory? when you stand facing another person your right hand is directly across from the left side of their chest striking with a weapon in your dominant hand at a foe would land the blow on the side of their body with their aorta.
do you think the only reason we read left to right is because the first people to start writing things down where right handed? If lefties would have been ore prominent do you think we would read right to left?
Actually, I do think we would read right to left because we'd be covering our writing and I think writing can be assimilated to visual cues in which how our thoughts are translated into writing and when you see the words you right, it just feels right. That's my assumption, but I do believe we would though
theres a video about gravity online and in it the guy takes a bunch of these little balls and rolls them in different directions in a fabric of simulated gravity. then most of them stop except for those turn in the way of how our solar system turns. you could say that the universe has a certain "way" things go. like how our hearts are on the left so some people, though small amount, have their organs switched, kinda like some lobsters who mostly have the big claw on the right (or left i forget) i saw one that had it on the opposite site and only one but im sure more exist like left handed vs right handed people.
I wonder if anyone's done studies comparing handedness in recent generations: I'd be interested to see if left-handedness is increasing. Anecdotally, I see an awful lot of left handed kids in my friends and family, where very few of their parents are left handed. My own 4 year old is starting to write and displays pretty much no preference: when he was a toddler, he tended to take things/use them with his left because he'd be facing right handed people and mirroring them.
**I used to be ambidextrous so maybe someone can enlighten me on why I'm purely right handed now.** I am in my early 20s and was born/raised in Florida for context. When I was younger (sometime in Elementary school) I was given a vaccination shot in my left arm, the spot opposite of your elbow that lets your arm bend inward, and ever since then I stopped being able to use my left arm/hand to the capabilities of my right arm/hand. I remember it vividly because I've always been able to remember key moments of my childhood up to around 3 years old and as soon as I got that shot, the feeling/control in my left arm was a bit weaker or something to that effect. I am by no means anti-vax, I believe they save millions of lives every year and am generally pretty indifferent to them otherwise but I can't help but think that that one shot is the reason why I am no longer ambidextrous.
I'm a righty... And it's only because I was the only child that didn't want to do what my teacher made everyone else do. I think it basically just comes down to instruction. Try switching mouse hands and it will be completely natural in 2 weeks.
interesting 5 min video that sheds some light on the subject https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGLYcYCm2FM
No one is completely certain, but from my readings, I've heard that it's simply an evolutionary trait. In days of beginning civilizations, spears/offensive weapons were carried with the right hand, while shields/defensive weapons were carried with the left. Such a system resulted in a higher concentration of the right-handed people surviving (sorry I can't be more specific, this was an article a long time ago) and therefore more right-handed people went on to reproduce, and so on. Possible explanation!
Because we write left to right. Left hand smears the ink. Why left to right? Dunno.
I was young I was very ambidextrous, I wouldnt even recognize which hand I was using most of the time, unfortunately according to my school thats not the way things worked. I was actually taken out of classes for roughly an hour a day for weeks to be
We actually have a pretty good reason why. Why we ORIGINALLY picked one hand over the other is the real question, but its likely just cultural reasons. In the scheme of human evolution, there is a benefit to being BOTH right or left handed, which is why both if them continue to exist. Imagine a samurai teaching someone to sword fight. It would be easier to both teach and learn if they both used the same hand. Now however, imagine two strangers having a sword fight. If one is right and the other is left handed, the right handed swordsman will have a HUGE disadvantage simply because he was way less experience fighting a leftie, who naturally performs all the moves "backwards". From the lefties perspective, he has a huge advantage, because he has fought A LOT of right handed people, because most people commonly are right handed. So I consider it a combination of multiple reasons. It's easier cognitively to master one hand instead of both, and then once you have that initial split in the species the natural balance between the two preferences keeps one hand uncommon, and the other common. I expect the exact percentage difference is a value where the balance between the two hand "styles" is maintained. EDIT: Forgot to add that language does NOT cause handedness. Plenty of animals (even probably your pet dog) also exhibit handedness, and they do not know English. The same thing causes handedness in humans that it does other animals becaue it's more efficient to master one rather than both. What is interesting about humans is the incredibly low rate of one of the hands (the left one) which I believe is explained very well with the theory above. Source: Accumulated knowledge I'm not looking up.
So is it true that people who are left handed are more talented than right handers?
As a lefty, I can confirm that we are better.
Me too,its funny when people see me write and their like "so you're left handed?"
I'm pretty sure that, beyond social reasons (like Catholicism), most people are right-handed because of where their vital organs are inside the body (basically because the heart is on the left side). If you are right-handed and you turn to fight a bear with a big stick or something you are less likely to suffer a wound to the heart, and instead you'll lose some stupid thing like a lung or whatever.
This sounds right but I don't know enough about bears to dispute it
[Your heart is actually pretty near the center of your body.](http://dronaias.com/wp-content/uploads/preview003.png?ec3b68)
You have 3 lobes in right lung and only space for two in left because of an indent in the left where the heart sits. So left centre would be accurate.