I will start 2025 with a blog post on a topic that has captured a lot of recent scrutiny—generative AI. Late last year I participated in a group demonstration of the research capabilities of ChatGPT. We saw how ChatGPT can summarize the research on a particular topic, generate a list of relevant references on that topic, and write a draft research plan based on the results of its search. In the face of so much misinformation about left-handedness on the internet, I was curious to see what a ChatGPT search would reveal when I instructed the program to “Tell me what you know about left-handedness.” Here is the link I used, ChatGPT, and below is the result I received in the exact format it appears in the output.

Left-handedness refers to a preference for using the left hand for tasks such as writing, drawing, eating, and other fine motor activities. Approximately 10-12% of the world’s population is left-handed, although this percentage can vary slightly across different cultures and studies. Here are some key points about left-handedness:
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Biological Basis
• Brain Lateralization: Left-handedness is associated with differences in brain lateralization, where the brain’s right hemisphere (which controls the left side of the body) may be more dominant.
• Genetics: While there isn’t a single “left-handed gene,” it’s believed to have a genetic component. Left-handedness often runs in families but isn’t directly inherited.
• Prenatal Factors: Factors like hormonal influences during fetal development or the position of the fetus in the womb may play a role in handedness.
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Cultural and Historical Perspectives
• Bias and Stigma: Historically, left-handedness was often viewed negatively in many cultures. Some societies associated it with bad luck or incompetence. For instance, the Latin word sinister means both “left” and “unlucky.”
• Modern Acceptance: While left-handedness is more accepted today, some tools and systems still favor right-handed individuals, creating challenges for left-handed people.
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Cognitive and Creative Associations
• Creativity: Some studies suggest that left-handed individuals may have advantages in certain creative or divergent thinking tasks, though evidence is mixed.
• Problem-Solving: Left-handers are sometimes overrepresented in fields requiring strong spatial or mathematical skills, like architecture or engineering.
• Ambidexterity: A small subset of left-handed individuals is ambidextrous, able to use both hands equally well.
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Health and Performance
• Health Correlations: Left-handedness has been linked to both risks and benefits. It’s associated with higher prevalence rates of certain conditions, like dyslexia and ADHD, but also with potential athletic advantages in sports like tennis, fencing, and baseball.
• Life Expectancy Myths: The idea that left-handed people have shorter lifespans has been largely debunked.
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Tools and Adaptations
• Many tools, like scissors, desks, and musical instruments, are designed for right-handed individuals. However, there has been an increase in products tailored for left-handed use, making everyday life easier for left-handers.

I have highlighted in blue the four statements where I question the ChatGPT result. First, left-handers are bilateral, not right hemisphere dominant in their hemispheric activation. Second, interest in the role of hormones in the development of left-handedness has been largely abandoned. Third, research on the overrepresentation of left-handers in certain professions has produced mixed results and, fourth, research does not support the existence of higher rates of left-handedness in individual with dyslexia and ADHD. Otherwise, the ChatGPT description of what is known about left-handedness is brief but mostly accurate.

Where ChatGPT falls short is in response to my request for references dealing with left-handedness. This instruction produced a list of three books (none of them recent publications), three research papers, three websites (the links did not directly access any articles on left-handedness), two organizations of left-handers, and two documentaries about left-handedness. When I asked specifically for references to my work, ChatGPT produced five results. The program correctly identified my book, Laterality: Exploring the enigma of left-handedness and this blog. The three other references were misnamed and associated with the wrong image to identify the work. For example, the image of my 1981 book, Lateral preferences and human behavior, coauthored with Stanley Coren, was associated with the text, Left-handedness: A marker for decreased survival fitness, an article Stanley Coren published with Diane Halpern. ChatGPT listed as its sources for the reference material as Wikipedia, ResearchGate, Penn State, and Amazon.

ChatGPT is described as an “AI language model that was trained on a large body of text from a variety of sources.” In response to my request, ChatGPT accessed very limited resources that missed large amounts of the vast literature on left-handedness. Also, there is the mismatch problem where a published article is credited to the wrong source. For this reason, I give ChatGPT a low rating when it comes to providing credible information about left-handedness. The descriptive summary is not bad, but the program goes wildly astray in providing reliable and up-to-date references on the topic of left-handedness.