McEnroe and Nadal. Two competitive left-handers. Pictures: Kate from UK, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Robbiesaurus from Smithtown, NY, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

It’s a curious thing, but even after eons of evolution we left-handers still make up about one-tenth of the world’s population. Is it because we are just ‘ornery’?

You would expect evolution to have squeezed out the minority ‘lefties’ and increased the numbers of right-handers. After all, right-handedness benefits most people because sharing the same dominant hand brings better interpersonal coordination and leads to better cooperation. But it seems that the left-handers have survived not only simply because they are different but also because they are inherently more competitive.

Why left-handers may be more competitive

That’s the finding of a research project at the University of Chieti-Pescara in central Italy after a study of more than 1,100 people, assessing their ‘handedness’ and several measures of their competitiveness. Their paper, in the journal Science Reports, suggests that the more strongly ‘left-handed’ individuals were less likely to be anxious about competition. On the contrary, they were likely to welcome it as a means of self-improvement.

Comparing strongly left-handed people with strongly right-handed people directly, the lefties scored higher on what the researchers call “hypercompetitive traits,” indicating a desire to win and dominate. This can particularly be seen in ‘one-to-one’ sports, such as tennis. Step forward John McEnroe and Rafael Nadal.

It’s been suggested that those giants of the art world, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were both natural left-handers, but the evidence is far from clear-cut.

Creativity matters more than which hand you use

What matters, though, is their works, not which hand held the brush. And on a painting course in Tuscany at the Watermill, we don’t mind which hand you use: you’ll have a wonderfully creative time. As you will on our writing, knitting or Italian language weeks. For more details, please click here. Places are limited, so don’t be disappointed. Get your booking in NOW! 

Winston Churchill was also left-handed, but I‘ve only seen pictures of him painting with his right hand, like this one from the Surf Club in Florida:

Picture: By Unknown author – https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/33325, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Paul McCartney, like me, played the guitar left-handed, but he had rather more talent!

Picture: By JazzyJoeyD – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=119334572 via Wikimedia Commons.