In a Right-handed World, Lefties More Prone to Inhibition and Anxiety

It’s bad enough that the entire world is designed against their natural inclinations, now a new study has explained that their problems don’t end just there! This research has claimed that lefties are quite often prone to inhibition and anxiety too.

According to Lynn Wright, a behavioral psychologist at the University of Abertay Dundee, UK, who led the study, when left-handers start doing something, they tend to dither.

''Right-handers tend to jump in a bit,'' New Scientist quoted the expert, as saying.

The research team came to the conclusion, after conducting tests of behavioral inhibition. They found 46 left-handed men and women scored higher than 66 right-handers. Women, too, tended to rack up higher scores on the tests of reticence.

The boffins identified these predilections by giving subjects a behavioral test that gauges both personal restraint and impulsiveness, qualities which seem to emanate from opposite hemispheres of our brains.

Compared to right-handers, lefties and women were likelier to agree with statements such as, ''I worry about making mistakes'' and ''Criticism or scolding hurts me quite a bit''.

All groups responded similarly to statements such as ''I often act on the spur of the moment'' and ''I crave excitement and new sensations'', the research team found.

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According to Wright, the results could be due to wiring differences in the brains of left-handers and right-handers.

Research suggests that handedness is a matter of degree. But in left-handers the right half of the brain is dominant, and it is this side that seems to control negative aspects of emotion. In right-handers the left-brain dominates.

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The study has been published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

Source-ANI
TAN