The road forleft - handers , in this overwhelmingly right - handed reality we live in , has never been an easy one to travel . particularly , it seems , when it come to driving on an actual road .
indisputable , left-hander mostly motor their way through liveliness just as well as the remainder of us . Mozart and Beethoven , Michelangelo and da Vinci , Gates and Zuckerberg , Clinton and Obama all have demonstrate that .
But let ’s confront it . A most - trusted sidekick is not called a " left over - bridge player man " . People who stumble out of leftover discipline on two left feet … yeah , you want no part of them .
Everyday tasks like writing can be an absolute sight for lefties . Opening a can with a hired man can - opener ? Using scissor grip ? A incubus .
All sort of studies have been done on handedness and mortality , withearly research(25 years or older ) evoke that lefties die younger . Those findings have been roundly challenge , even discounted by many scholars since then . But new studies pop out up all the time showing that lefties are , at the least , more prone to fortuity , both on the road and off it .
So , back to drive : Nothing is ever wholly proven , but to be on the safe side , it might be good to expend a lilliputian more carefulness , left-handed pitcher .
Asurvey by an insurance companionship in the U.K. last yearfound that left - handed drivers get in more serious stroke than righties , and speed more often . That survey might not hold up toscientificscrutiny . But that does n’t mean it is n’t right .
And by right field , we think correct .
It’s a Right-handed World
" I think probably left - handers have more chance event because it ’s a right - handed reality . That probably accounts for most of it , " Howard Kushner , a historian of medicine and neuroscience , and the author of " On the Other paw : Left Hand , Right Brain , Mental Disorder , and story , " says .
possibly the confining we ’ll get to a real answer on lefties and driving comes from a study by psychologist Stanley Coren , the author of the 1993 book , " The Left - Hander Syndrome : The Causes and Consequences of Left - Handedness . " Coren points to a reflex action at law that may play against left over - handed drivers , at least in places where cars operate on the correct - handwriting side of the route ( which , of course , is most of the earthly concern ) .
In his study , Coren threw foam galosh ball at citizenry , most of whom reflectively tried to block the ball with their nondominant helping hand . That ’d be high-risk news if it happened on the interstate at thrill minute .
From Coren in the August 1992 payoff of theAmerican Journal of Public Health :
Ezra Cornell psychologist Daniel Casasanto sees that as a completely plausible account because of something phone " approach path and avoidance " actions , which have been physically traced in a kind of emotional map of the Einstein . The " approach path " emotion ( things like happiness ) were long think to be gathered in the right side of the brain . The avoidance ( disgust , fear ) were in the left .
Right Brain Left Brain Flip
But a few eld ago , scientists find thatthose emotions were completely pitch in the brain of leftfield - handers . The approach emotion — you might call that the " good " side — were on the left . The bad ( the avoidanceemotions ) were on the right field .
To the left - handed nous , left is salutary . correct is bad .
" The style we conceptualize emotion depends on the way we use our hands to interact with the man . That ’s not a theory that anybody had indicate before a few years ago , " Casasanto say . " We get laid it ’s true because this , ' Right is dear , left is tough ' that is found across languages and across cultures is also found in the unconscious , in the right - handers ' mind . But the precise opponent is found in left - handers ' minds , in spite of everything that language and refinement is telling us . "
( If it seems strange that you ’d avoid something or endeavor to block something with your nondominant helping hand , Casasanto suggests thinking more in a " sword and shield " kind of way . The sword is in your dominant script . The shield is in the other one . )
Short of croak all Mad Max to test these things out in a veridical - humans setting , all this continue surmisal . But it ’s an challenging one . If a piddling scarey for lefties .
We can , at times , ascribe right smart too much importance to laterality . Like eye color or the color of peel , which direction you throw a Lucille Ball does n’t , in the end , make you more or less human .
" difference , different traits like laterality , centre colour , other thing that make people look different from one another , " enjoin historian Kushner , " … we should n’t overly burden them with have some kind of deeper meaning than they in reality do . "
Still , there is some meaning there . Finding out why some people go left and others right-hand , why and how unlike people think what they do , matter . It ’s why scientists have been looking at it for century .
" It matters because the way we interact with our environment is a Brobdingnagian part of how we learn , " Casasanto articulate . " And our hands are a really important point of interface between the someone and the world . "
