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The geography of American left-handedness
- jgalt212 11y agoThese days, you'd think you'd see the opposite where parents might force boys towards left-handedness. If you're a right-hander who throws 90 MPH, the MLB scouts will take a look at you. If you're a left-hander who throws 90 MPH, you'll get drafted.
- earlz 11y agoI grew up in southeast Oklahoma, as well as all my family.. Teachers spewing off about left handedness being evil is surprisingly common, though I didn't expect it to persist to today. Anecdotal accounts: my wife was told being left hand was evil (she was ambidextrous) and she was converted to fully right handed in 1st grade (1990s). My step-brother's kindergarten teacher constantly picked on him for being left handed and made him a mockery of the class before the superintendent intervened (1970s)... I recall one other account to do with my step-mom, but I can't remember the details of who it was. So yea, idk what is up with Oklahoma, but they do NOT like lefties
- hackuser 11y ago> my wife was told being left hand was evil (she was ambidextrous) and she was converted to fully right handed in 1st grade (1990s). The 1990s? Is that a typo?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- earlz 11y agoMy wife is in her 20s, so yes, she was in first grade in the 90s heh
- hackuser 11y agoSorry, I was not commenting on your wife's age (egads!)! I was surprised that such a practice continued as recently as the 1990s. Wow; text can be a dangerous form of communication.
- bdavisx 11y agoWhat's up with Oklahoma is a larger concentration of fundamentalist Christians who are anti-science and therefore ignorant of many modern scientific advances; and also hold a lot of prejudices from bygone eras.
- sp332 11y agoI've never heard of fundamentalist Christians being anti-left-handed. And I am one.
- mhurron 11y agoThe left side being evil and related to the Devil is pretty embedded in Christianity.
- sp332 11y agoAnything in America in the last 200 years or so?
- mhurron 11y agoYa you're right as soon as they left Europe, they stopped doing all the stupid stuff and became enlightened. http://www.indiana.edu/~primate/lspeak2.html#educators http://www.indiana.edu/~primate/lspeak2.html#educators http://www.landoverbaptist.net/showthread.php?t=49703 http://www.landoverbaptist.net/showthread.php?t=49703
- petejansson 11y agoI had years of mechanical drawing in high school, and it wasn't until my junior year that the teacher noticed I am left-handed. He started having me create drawings from the lower-right corner to the upper-left, while the right-handed kids drew from upper-left to lower-right. When I switched, I stopped having smudged drawings caused by dragging my hand across the completed parts of the drawings. Little things.
- phillc73 11y agoMy father's left handed, I'm left handed, my sister's ambidextrous. A couple of her kids are left handed. There is certainly a genetic component. My son's too young yet to have a dominant hand, but I make a point of putting things in his left hand. It's a lifestyle choice. I grew up in Australia in the 70s and 80s, and I don't recall any prejudice against left-handers at the time. I never even really thought about the difficulties of using right-handed implements. It's just the way things were. My father does tell a story, from the early 50s, where his mother had to forcibly intervene at his primary school, where they were trying to force him to use his left hand.
- handedness 11y ago> ..I make a point of putting things in his left hand. It's a lifestyle choice. Could you expound on that?
- MacAsm 11y ago> but I make a point of putting things in his left hand. Don't even do that. It can make he use his left hand because you're someway influencing he and if he start writing with non-dominant hand because this he may develop a lot of problems on brain. > it's a lifestyle choice. What?! You first said there is certainly a genetic component then it's a lifestyle choice? it isn't.
- aw3c2 11y agoThat is a rather tiny difference in percentage, is it even statistically significant in relation to the samples?
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y agoIf you're going to be asking questions like this, it's useful to play around with the basic formulas: https://upload.wikimedia.org/math/0/b/7/0b7491a8614d7808364b5a3fec9e8033.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/math/0/b/7/0b7491a8614d7808364b... and in particular imagine what'll happen when you have, on average, 28000 responders per state and what kinds of differences you can expect to observe.
- aluhut 11y agoMy parents are right handed. I'm left handed. Had a pretty hard time in communist Poland too. It started with a kind of wrong diagnosis where the doctor told my parents that I'm both and that they could choose which side I'd use. So my grandparents lobbied for right. I started out left but it was hard with a fountain pen and since I had nobody to help me out with that my parents finally broke and told me to learn writing right. My writing is still horrible. Sometimes even I can't read it. I became used to getting worse grades just for that. Same goes for art class. I was the only person in class to cut himself with paper scissors... Thanks to the motivation of my gf and colleges, I've started learning to write with my left hand but it's not easy. It's like starting over again. My gf bought me scissors for lefties. What a beautiful feeling to cut paper with the "right" hand!
- Someone1234 11y agoYou are the 9% (if both parents are righties, then there is a 9% chance of a left handed baby). What's interesting about left handedness is that even if both parents are lefties, the kid's chance is only 26%. Which is strangely low for something where there is some generic link. If one parent is a lefty the chance drops to 19%, and if no parent is a lefty then it is 9%. The average over society is 10% of the population. I almost don't wonder if generics isn't the primary reason that people are left handed, but generics can make you more likely to be a lefty (for whatever reason). That would somewhat explain the statistics.
- MacAsm 11y agomy parent are right-handed too but my grandma is leftie. But it seems almost everybody else didn't have any leftie in the family that they're he's aware of. I find this odd, mostly because they says it's genetics so a lot of people cary left handed genes but it's hardly "primary"/"used" (I don't know the right word).
- erichmond 11y agoBoth me and my sister are lefties, but our parents are both righties, which seems improbable but it's interesting nonetheless.
- mratzloff 11y agoHere's something I've always found strange: every relationship I've ever had has been with a left-handed woman. I'm right-handed. It's not something I notice until after maybe a third date (as I usually am the one paying the bill before then). I don't watch for it. I certainly don't ask up front. And I don't give it any kind of weight. But it's still weird. For whatever reason, I guess I just seem to click better with lefties.
- tosseraccount 11y agoThose sneaky East Coast lefties !!! sinister (adj.) early 15c., "prompted by malice or ill-will, intending to mislead," from Old French senestre, sinistre "contrary, false; unfavorable; to the left" (14c.), from Latin sinister "left, on the left side" (opposite of dexter) http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=sinister http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=sinister
- beachstartup 11y agoit should be noted that the french word for 'left', 'gauche', also has a negative connotation when used in other contexts. and 'maladroit' comes from 'droit', which means 'right' in french.
- cgriswald 11y agoForcing a child to write with their non-dominant hand can lead to all kinds of psychological trauma. Children can develop stutters, have a difficult time learning, and can experience profound secondary psychological effects. Think about how much concentration it takes to write with your non-dominant hand. Now imagine being a child, being told you are somehow wrong _for being who and what you are_, and being forced to concentrate on working with your non-dominant hand while attempting to learn how to read, write, and do math. This educator should be fired. She is clearly incompetent. Rather than supporting someone who already faces many challenges the right-handed world doens't face, she is actively attacking his psyche and making it more difficult for him to get an education.
- jtedward 11y agoIt's interesting that the findings in this article are an unintended benefit of a study on smell. Makes you wonder if any other studies have important data like this where data was simply discarded because it wasn't relevant to the initial hypothesis.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y agoMy reading of the article is that the data was extremely relevant to the original hypothesis, and was used to disprove it.
- smaili 11y agoFor those that want to go straight to the results ==> https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2015/09/left-handedness.png https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2015/09/...
- c3534l 11y ago"The National Geographic data also show significant variation in rates of left-handedness by U.S. state, with higher rates in the Northeast and lower rates in the middle of the country." The actual accompanying data only describes white people born after 1950 which could be evidence of too many researcher degrees of freedom. Additionally, the legend to the map is showing single percentage points of difference which hardly speaks to a robust finding. And given the fact that the data was collected in a non-scientific manner, that 1% between New Jersey and Missouri may be as easily attributed to ambidextrous people fibbing to be more unique, or perhaps for some reason National Geographic appeals to different kinds of people than the underlying population. At least show me an r value or something. At any rate, the idea that since the Victorian era people have evolved to be less left-handed than in certain areas is absurd and without any scientific basis.