My previous blog post discussed a recent philosophical publication arguing that left- and right-handedness represent more than mere hand use.¹ Left- and right-handers use their hands differently and this affects their lived experience and how they organize the world around them. A second approach to looking at the differences between the lived experiences of left- and right-handers is found in an area of psychology called embodied cognition. This view claims that people who interact with their environment in different ways, as do left- and right-handers, form different mental representations of the world.

A recent study explored this idea.² The researcher stated that the left side is frequently associated with bad things and negative concepts. Indeed, an examination of 50 languages revealed that 72% of them connected positive items or actions with the right side while the left side was seen as negative. French is one example of a language that shows this bias. Droite, meaning honorable and upright, is the French word for right while gauche, awkward and clumsy, is the word for left. The English words adroit, showing skill, and gauche, lacking grace, are related to these French words for right and left. The researcher proposed two possibilities. When asked to interact with the environment, would left- and right-handers respond in terms of the linguistic conventions of left=bad and right=good? Or would they respond according to the predictions from embodied cognition, namely, that the side of the preferred hand determines the good side regardless of whether it is left or right?

The researcher asked left- and right-handers to imagine that a cartoon character was going to the zoo where he/she would meet an animal that they loved, a zebra, and an animal that they hated, a panda. Boxes were placed to the right and to the left of the cartoon character and the participant was told to draw the zebra in the box that represented good things and the panda in the box that represented bad. As a control, the researcher also had an experimental condition with the same instructions except that the boxes appeared above and below the cartoon character. Seventy-four percent (74%) of left-handers drew the good animal in the left box while 67% of right-handers drew the good animal in the right box. The control condition showed no difference between left- and right-handers; 89% of left-handers and 83% of right-handers drew the good animal in the box above the cartoon character.

The researcher concluded that the mental representations and associations of right and left external space differ for left- and right-handers. Good=left for left-handers and good=right for right-handers. The side of the preferred hand influences the mental metaphor of which side is the good side. The findings of this study confirm the philosophical idea that being left- or right-handed means more than just hand use. The side of the preferred hand affects a person’s mental representation of the world and their assessment of a good side and a bad side in the environment around them.

¹See How am I left-handed? July 6, 2017.

²Casasanto, D. (2009). Embodiment of abstract concepts: Good and bad in right- and left-handers. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 138, 351-367.