Right-Hand Bias Is Everywhere

The Atlantic:

As any left-handed person who’s ever struggled with a pair of scissors can attest, the physical world is largely built for righties, who comprise up to 90 percent of the population. But that imbalance also affects lefties in more subtle and profound ways than just unwieldy office supplies.

Daniel Casasanto, a psychologist at the University of Chicago, studies the ways in which the world is mentally biased toward the right. His research has shown that politicians, for example, tend to use their non-dominant hand for negative gestures, and parents in recent decades have shown a preference for baby names typed on the right side of the keyboard. Now, Casasanto is studying how handedness affects “approach motivation”—how we approach or avoid physical and social situations in the world around us.

Read the whole story: The Atlantic