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28/01/2018

Of course, now it is known that nothing happens to be left-handed. As psychologist Stephen Christman of the University of Toledo (Ohio, USA) explains in the Scientific American website, there is little evidence to suggest that lefties have any physical or psychological handicap. Throughout history, lefties have been around 10 to 15% of the population in general. The fact that this trait has remained stable after many generations suggests that lefty is not an evolutionary weakness, as many psychologists of the past believed.
However, this characteristic does entail certain psychological and neurological differences. The investigations have not been completed, but there are several proven aspects about the cognitive and psychological profiles of lefties:
Can think faster
In principle, left-handed people can use both sides of their brain more easily and efficiently.
According to an Australian study published in 2006 in the journal Neuropsychology, left-handed people often have connections between the right and left hemispheres of the brain, allowing them to process information more quickly. The study authors evaluated the performance of participants with a task that measured the transfer time between the hemispheres of the brain, and in which they had to use both sides of the brain at the same time.
The research revealed that lefty participants processed information faster between the two sides of the brain, a cognitive advantage that could benefit them in areas such as video games and sports.
Lefties tend to the left (not ideologically)
The hand you use can have a surprising effect on the way you judge abstract ideas such as courage, intelligence and honesty.
A 2009 Stanford University study found that left-handed and deft people may implicitly favor their dominant side. In the study, the participants observed two columns of illustrations and had to say which seemed to them more cheerful, honest, intelligent and attractive. The left-handers chose implicitly illustrations from the left-hand column, while right-handers tended to choose right-hand images.
"Lefties implicitly think that the good is on the left and the bad on the right, although consciously, and explicitly, everything in the language and culture tells them just the opposite," said in a statement the psychologist and lead author of the Daniel Casasanto study.
Lefties have an advantage in some sports
Although less than 15% of the world's population is left-handed, 25% of Major League Baseball players are left-handed. Why? Maybe because they usually have a time faster reaction, as found in the Australian study cited above.
However, there is another reason. Several studies have revealed that lefties seem to have an advantage in interactive sports such as boxing, fencing, tennis and baseball. In contrast, this advantage does not extend to non-interactive sports, such as gymnastics and scuba diving. It is possible that, due to their physical orientation and their different movements, the left-handers are able to disconcert their right-handed opponents, who are accustomed to competing with other right-handed players.
Your brain can organize emotions differently
Your dominant hand can determine how the emotions are placed in your brain. A 2012 study published in the journal PLoS ONE found that left-handed motivation was associated with increased activity in the right hemisphere of the brain, while in the right-handed the opposite was true.
This can have important consequences in controlling behavioral and anxiety disorders, which are often treated by brain stimulation to increase neural activity in the left hemisphere.
"Considering what we show here, this treatment, which helps right-handers, can be detrimental to left-handed people, as it gives them just the opposite of what they need," says one of the study's authors, psychologist Geoffrey Brookshire, said in a statement.
Lefties can be more creative
Many experts and studies have pointed to a link between lefties and creativity. Is this real? Very likely. Research has shown that lefties are better at divergent thinking (the ability to think of many solutions to a single problem), a cognitive mark of creativity. However, it should be noted that studies show correlation, not causality, so the findings are not entirely conclusive.
Another possibility, proposed by psychologist Chris McManus of University College London in his book Right-Hand, Left-Hand, is that the left-brain has a much more developed right hemisphere, which is associated with creative thinking.
There is an additional link between lefty and creativity; is a bit speculative, but also intriguing. As they grow in the minority of left-handers and look different, some left-handed children may develop what is known as the outsider's mentality, a tendency to have a more individualized, rather than group-oriented, self-image. That mentality may predispose a person to develop qualities such as independence and nonconformity, which psychologists have associated with creative thinking and innovation.

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