Righties Like the Right, Lefties Favor the Left, and People Without Hands Are Excluded Again

woman-raising-hand.jpg
Every wonder why your right-handed friends are always raising their right hands for things, or reaching to the right, or gazing longingly at whomever's sitting on that side of them? Meanwhile, left-handers are looking mournfully at their left hands, because it sucks to be left-handed? No? Well, regardless, scientists have found that right-handers prefer the right side of anything, and left-handers like the left. Thousands of years of behavior now make sense, as does your deep-seated need to sleep on whatever side of the bed.

Via Scientific American,

Researchers theorize that since people have better control of their dominant hand, they unconsciously associate good things with what's called their "fluent side of space." To test this idea, scientists studied the reaction of stroke patients who had lost the use of their so-called "fluent hand." These patients flipped the natural bias and associated "good" with the side that they were now forced to use.

And when healthy right-handed subjects were forced into left-handedness with the impairment of a bulky ski glove on their right hand, they, too, began to show a bias toward the left.

One might say this is obvious, or that science is starting to get a little bit lame with their very important discoveries, or even that the implications of this are, in fact, exceedingly minimal. But that would be left-handed of one.

If you have no hands, we are sorry. We wouldn't kid about that.

Right-Handers Tend Prefer the Right Side [SA]

My Voice Nation Help
0 comments

From the Vault

 

©2013 Village Voice, LLC, All rights reserved.
Browse Voice Nation
  • Voice Places New York

    Voice Places

    Find everything you're looking for in your city

  • Happy Hour App

    Happy Hour App

    Find the best happy hour deals in your city

  • Daily Deals

    Daily Deals

    Get today's exclusive deals at savings of anywhere from 50-90%

  • Best Of

    Best Of...

    Check out the hottest list of places and things to do around your city