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Why is almost everyone right-handed? A new study connects it to bipedalism

ox.ac.uk

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Re: Why is almost everyone right-handed? A new study connects it to bipedalism

#211

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

Vachyas wrote: post #151

An interesting anecdote that comes to mind is playing old computer games with arrow keys, which used my right hand. I got pretty proficient with this. Over the years, I (and I imagine many others) switched over to WASD to play newer games with mouse + keyboard, but this meant using the left hand for "arrow keys" Now I can directly compare how proficient I am with WASD vs Arrow Keys and the result surprised me. I was…

From my experiences, I think it's mainly learned.

I'm right-handed, but I trained myself to use a mouse/trackball left-handed due to better ergonomics. I was getting back/shoulder pain and thought that it was related to computer use and realised that with the typical keyboard with numeric pad and a mouse setup, that my body was twisting more due to the mouse being more to the right than it needed to be. Using my left hand instead means less twisting as there's no numeric keypad on the left.

It took probably a couple of weeks to get comfortable with left-handed mouse use and these days, I am fairly ambidextrous on a computer.

The other thing that makes me think that handedness can be learned is learning to juggle. I found that it's easier to start doing a new movement (i.e. a trick) with my right hand, but once I learn it with my left hand, the left hand becomes more accurate than my right.

Re: Why is almost everyone right-handed? A new study connects it to bipedalism

#212

Post by RugnirViking »

Danox wrote: post #171
Vachyas wrote: post #151

An interesting anecdote that comes to mind is playing old computer games with arrow keys, which used my right hand. I got pretty proficient with this. Over the years, I (and I imagine many others) switched over to WASD to play newer games with mouse + keyboard, but this meant using the left hand for "arrow keys" Now I can directly compare how proficient I am with WASD vs Arrow Keys and the result surprised me. I was…

Left-handed individuals living in a predominantly right-handed world possess the capacity to adapt and utilize their right hand effectively. While most right-handed individuals do not exhibit this ability unless they experience an extraordinary event, such as an injury to their right hand, left-handed individuals are compelled to learn how to use their right hand in a right-handed world. As a left-handed individual w…

it may surprise you to learn that the stick shift is on the other side in countries that drive on the left. Entire generations, regardless of handedness grow up using the other hand to operate it and thats kinda just normal, like with the wasd example from earlier

(although of course unlike your example it doesn't involve reaching across one's body to use it)

Re: Why is almost everyone right-handed? A new study connects it to bipedalism

#213

Post by odiroot »

Stevvo wrote: post #62

I taught English in China 20 years ago. Of the thousands of students I taught, none wrote with their left hand. "There are no left-handed in China" might sound as ridiculous as "There are no gays in Uganda". However of those thousands of students, none had messy hand writing. In any class in Europe or the US, around 10% of students have messy writing. Suspiciously equivalent to the supposed number of left-handed stud…

It was the same in communist Poland. You were not allowed to be a lefty -- all the citizens had to be homogenous. My father was born a lefty and forced to write with his right hand in primary school. He ended up learning how to write upside down too, just for fun.

Re: Why is almost everyone right-handed? A new study connects it to bipedalism

#214

Post by jpfromlondon »

kelipso wrote: post #156
Vachyas wrote: post #151

An interesting anecdote that comes to mind is playing old computer games with arrow keys, which used my right hand. I got pretty proficient with this. Over the years, I (and I imagine many others) switched over to WASD to play newer games with mouse + keyboard, but this meant using the left hand for "arrow keys" Now I can directly compare how proficient I am with WASD vs Arrow Keys and the result surprised me. I was…

Something super simple and revealing is try pressing on the brakes with your left foot.

you get used to it within a couple of hours

Re: Why is almost everyone right-handed? A new study connects it to bipedalism

#215

Post by markb139 »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #211
Vachyas wrote: post #151

An interesting anecdote that comes to mind is playing old computer games with arrow keys, which used my right hand. I got pretty proficient with this. Over the years, I (and I imagine many others) switched over to WASD to play newer games with mouse + keyboard, but this meant using the left hand for "arrow keys" Now I can directly compare how proficient I am with WASD vs Arrow Keys and the result surprised me. I was…

From my experiences, I think it's mainly learned. I'm right-handed, but I trained myself to use a mouse/trackball left-handed due to better ergonomics. I was getting back/shoulder pain and thought that it was related to computer use and realised that with the typical keyboard with numeric pad and a mouse setup, that my body was twisting more due to the mouse being more to the right than it needed to be. Using my left…

I’m a leftie and I don’t think I learnt it. My mother said as a very young child she noticed I’d mainly used my left hand to take things - probably food :) These days the only real problem for me is scissors, especially the ones with moulded plastic handles.

Re: Why is almost everyone right-handed? A new study connects it to bipedalism

#216

Post by snthpy »

acetofenone wrote: post #201

As far as I understand, the imbalance of the two hands is due to the collaborative nature of a species (if I teach you something is easyer if we use the same hand). There are advantages of using the other hand as dominant, in fact in competitive environment like ping pong we see a 50-50 split between left and right hands. This is because the left hand has the advantage of being rare and so the majority is not trained…

Interesting. Does this then become informative about the level of cooperation vs competition in the population?

In ping-pong where it is pure competition it stabilises at 50:50. In everyday life where we largely collaborate it settles around 90:10.

Would be interesting to see if there are variations over populations in time or space with differing levels of competition/conflict. Ofc these would need to persist long enough for the populations to adjust.

P.S. This is probably just another plausible sounding evo-psych bs theory. Idk why people give AI such a hard time for hallucinations. We are just the same. I guess we generally just apply more filters before expressing ourselves publicly. The problem with AI content is that humans take it at face value and publish without scrutiny.

Re: Why is almost everyone right-handed? A new study connects it to bipedalism

#217

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

markb139 wrote: post #215
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experiences, I think it's mainly learned. I'm right-handed, but I trained myself to use a mouse/trackball left-handed due to better ergonomics. I was getting back/shoulder pain and thought that it was related to computer use and realised that with the typical keyboard with numeric pad and a mouse setup, that my body was twisting more due to the mouse being more to the right than it needed to be. Using my left…

I’m a leftie and I don’t think I learnt it. My mother said as a very young child she noticed I’d mainly used my left hand to take things - probably food :) These days the only real problem for me is scissors, especially the ones with moulded plastic handles.

I didn't mean that most people don't have an innate handedness, but that it's quite possible to learn to do tasks with your non-favoured hand - it just takes a period of adjustment during which it feels incredibly clumsy to use that hand.

Re: Why is almost everyone right-handed? A new study connects it to bipedalism

#218

Post by snthpy »

snthpy wrote: post #216
acetofenone wrote: post #201

As far as I understand, the imbalance of the two hands is due to the collaborative nature of a species (if I teach you something is easyer if we use the same hand). There are advantages of using the other hand as dominant, in fact in competitive environment like ping pong we see a 50-50 split between left and right hands. This is because the left hand has the advantage of being rare and so the majority is not trained…

Interesting. Does this then become informative about the level of cooperation vs competition in the population? In ping-pong where it is pure competition it stabilises at 50:50. In everyday life where we largely collaborate it settles around 90:10. Would be interesting to see if there are variations over populations in time or space with differing levels of competition/conflict. Ofc these would need to persist long e…

Evolutionary temporal variation is addressed in the article. Although that could just say that without bipedalism, the pressure to use the hands to climb forces equal use over the available hands.

Re: Why is almost everyone right-handed? A new study connects it to bipedalism

#219

Post by Nevermark »

If our hands are intended to have complementary roles, then consistent specialization to one side makes sense, because there isn't a useful continuum - a strong developmental preference would be more reliable.

But since the middle of the continuum, i.e. no-preference, would presumably be the worst situation, it would be developmentally unstable and any tilt to either side would quickly become dominant.

One possible "motive" for a particular left-right lopsided bimodal skill pattern.

Re: Why is almost everyone right-handed? A new study connects it to bipedalism

#220

Post by dan00 »

kazinator wrote: post #158

Why is there handedness on stringed instruments? If you're right handed, you strum a guitar with your right hand, fret with the left. But both are fine motor skills requiring coordination. Left handed players go out of their way to acommodate doing it the other way around; either finding left-handed instruments (challenge: most things they might like/want are not available in lefty version) or suffer with a flipped r…

I think I read somewhere, that your preferred hand is better at staying in rhythm.
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