Science in the Making: Right Hand, Left Hand. III: Estimating historical rates of left-handedness

Abstract

The BBC television programme Right Hand, Left Hand, broadcast in August 1953, used a postal questionnaire to ask viewers about their handedness. Respondents were born between 1864 and 1948, and in principle therefore the study provides information on rates of left-handedness in those born in the nineteenth century, a group for which few data are otherwise available. A total of 6,549 responses were received, with an overall rate of left-handedness of 15.2%, which is substantially above that expected for a cohort born in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Left-handers are likely to respond preferentially to surveys about handedness, and the extent of over-response can be estimated in modern control data obtained from a handedness website, from the 1953 BBC data, and from Crichton-Browne's 1907 survey, in which there was also a response bias. Response bias appears to have been growing, being relatively greater in the most modern studies. In the 1953 data there is also evidence that left-handers were more common among later rather than early responders, suggesting that left-handers may have been specifically recruited into the study, perhaps by other left-handers who had responded earlier. In the present study the estimated rate of bias was used to correct the nineteenth-century BBC data, which was then combined with other available data as a mixture of two constrained Weibull functions, to obtain an overall estimate of handedness rates in the nineteenth century. The best estimates are that left-handedness was at its nadir of about 3% for those born between about 1880 and 1900. Extrapolating backwards, the rate of left-handedness in the eighteenth century was probably about 10%, with the decline beginning in about 1780, and reaching around 7% in about 1830, although inevitably there are many uncertainties in those estimates. What does seem indisputable is that rates of left-handedness fell during most of the nineteenth century, only subsequently to rise in the twentieth century.

Male–female differences in left-handedness in Sardinia, Italy

“…Location (urban versus non-urban), sample composition by age, sex, and education, and putative effects of cultural variables (such as masculinity or social pressure to conform) have been invoked to explain sex asymmetry in left-handedness (Papadatou-Pastou et al, 2008). Another consistently reported finding is the increase of lefthand preference in the younger generations (McManus, Moore, Freegard, & Rawles, 2010). This is mainly ascribed to changes in the cultural pressure to use the right hand in writing, a widespread practice in the past in both Western (Coude, Mignot, Lyonnet, & Munnich, 2006;Galobardes, Bernstein, & Morabia, 1999) and Eastern cultures (Japan; see Gregory, Claridge, Clark, & Taylor, 2003).…”

Dynamic dominance varies with handedness: reduced interlimb asymmetries in left-handers

“…Left-handers account for approximately 10% of total population, regardless of culture or historical time (Coren and Porac 1977; Gilbert and Wysocki 1992; McManus et al 2010). While genetic models have suggested explanations for the skewed distribution of handedness (Annett 1972; Levy and Nagylaki 1972; McManus 1985; Klar 1996), the causes of handedness remain ambiguous (Schaafsma et al 2009).…”

The Relation between Handedness Indices and Reproductive Success in a Non-Industrial Society

“…While the pegboard is a test for asymmetry in eye-hand coordination in fine motor control over a short distance, the ball throwing task tests the asymmetry in eye-hand coordination over a longer distance and the hand preference of throwing is known to be strongly lateralized [37]. In order to test the asymmetry of skill in this task, in addition to hand preference, we also measured the accuracy of the throws for each hand.…”