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What do Leonardo da Vinci, M.C. Escher and Jimi Hendrix have in common? They're just a few of the creative geniuses also known for being left-handed, helping to fuel the widespread belief that lefties are more creative.
It's a compelling idea that even scientists presumed to be true—but it's not, new Cornell psychology research finds.
Scouring more than a century of studies that explored links between handedness and creativity, the researchers discovered not only that left-handers are not naturally more creative, but they are underrepresented in the most creative fields compared to right- or mixed-handers—art and music being two exceptions.
"The data do not support any advantage in creative thinking for lefties," said Daniel Casasanto, associate professor in the Department of Psychology and College of Human Ecology, and director of the Experience and Cognition Lab. "In fact, there is some evidence that righties are more creative in some laboratory tests, and strong evidence that righties are overrepresented in professions that require the greatest creativity."
Casasanto is the senior author of "Handedness and Creativity: Facts and Fictions," published in the Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. Owen Morgan, a doctoral student in the field of psychology, is the first author, and Siyi Zhao, M.A. '22, is a co-author.
Casasanto said there are scientific reasons to believe that left-handed people, conservatively estimated to comprise about 10% of the population, would have an edge in creativity. Divergent thinking—the ability to explore many possible solutions to a problem in a short time and make unexpected connections—is supported more by the brain's right hemisphere.
One prior study found participants performed better at divergent thinking tasks after squeezing a ball with their left hand, compared to their right hand or no hand. That suggested motor activity controlled from the right hemisphere was kindling nearby areas responsible for creativity. If so, Casasanto said, it could be that southpaws (or "sinistrals") essentially go through life repeating this experiment—juicing their creativity every time they pick up a pen, paintbrush or screwdriver.
Planning to test that idea, the researchers conducted a meta-analysis—crunching the data from many previous studies—that sorted through nearly 1,000 relevant scientific papers published since 1900. Most were weeded out because they did not report data in a standardized way or included only righties (the norm in studies seeking homogeneous samples), leaving 17 studies reporting nearly 50 effect sizes.
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