Why Lefties Make Less

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/12/why-lefties-make-less/383635/?single_page=true

by mycodebreaks • 12 years ago

23 24 12 years ago

theatlantic.com

meric• 12 years ago

The sport reference -

Rafael Nadal is left handed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Nadal

zipfle• 12 years ago

It may be a bit different in sports, where handedness matters more directly. At least in fencing, a right-hander going against a left-hander is a very different situation than two people of the same handedness competing, and because right-handers are such a majority, lefties have loads of time to practice exploiting the lefty-v-righty special case. Actually one of the really interesting things is watching lefties against other lefties, because neither tends to be used to what for righties is the 'normal' orientation to the opponent.

fixedd• 12 years ago

Reference: The Princess Bride :P

cafard2• 12 years ago

A left-handed pitcher can last in major league baseball into his early 40s, an age when most position players and right-handed pitchers would have retired. There is an advantage from unfamiliarity in boxing (another comment mentions fencing). I believe that Marvin Hagler was naturally right-handed but taught himself to box as a left-hander.

lukaslalinsky• 12 years ago

I have not done any research, but this does not match my experience in tech companies. Some of the best programmers I have worked with were left-handed and were definitely making more than the average at the company. There also seems to be fairly high percentage of left-handed programmers in general. However, I'm left-handed myself, so I might be noticing patterns, where there are none.

srtjstjsj• 12 years ago

to get the math right: what percentage of the best programmers were lefties?

curiouslurker• 12 years ago

Same experience. 4 out 7 of my CS professors were left handed and some of the smartest people in their field.

bradleyland• 12 years ago

The plural of anecdote is not data. The results of the research conducted do not dictate that left-handed people must be inferior, it only presents the findings that statistically, those traits were present in the sample.

It is entirely possible for you to have had great experiences with lefties, and the findings stated in the article to be true. The findings in the article are also not a good reason to discriminate against left-handed people.

chasing• 12 years ago

So check your "right privilege" at the door, please.

santacluster• 12 years ago

Being of mixed-handedness (write left, use mouse an throw right etcetera) I always feel left out of these kind of stats...

Seriously though, I may be a minority, but it's not all that unusual to not strongly fall into either category, left-handedness is very much a spectrum. These kind or studies and articles making left and right handedness a black and white thing feel kind of outdated.

cylinder• 12 years ago

I'm the same as you. Given that people write with pen and paper less every day, it's becoming a much more trivial issue everywhere outside of sports.

seanmcdirmid3• 12 years ago

I write with my left hand, mouse with my right hand (I think that is common). I currently live in a society where almost no one is overtly left handed, and I still get stares when I eat in public (though not as much as I used to).

I can imagine that "creative", "forward thinking", and "cognitive problems" go hand in hand: only a bit of spectrum separates the "crazy like a fox" and "crazy like a nut" (people mostly prefer conformity if we admit or not). It really isn't that surprising that lefties don't do better on average, and that we tend to do better at extremes (most of the last few presidents besides W were left handed, a lot of good programmers are, and so on).

kagamine3• 12 years ago

When you eat in public with your hands, like a sandwich? Because I was taught growing up in the UK that everybody should hold their fork in their left hand and knife in the right. That's how to set a table, forks left, knives right.

seanmcdirmid3• 12 years ago

I hold my chopsticks with my left hand. Not good for tight circular tables.

robert_tweed2• 12 years ago

I always thought that was backwards and have done it the "wrong" way around since early childhood, in spite of my parents' disapproval.

There are clear reasons why the left-hand-fork thing is an objectively strange choice:

Firstly, the knife is optional. If you are eating say, pasta, with just a fork, why would you use your non-dominant hand?

Secondly, putting the fork in your dominant hand minimises the chance of missing your mouth and stabbing yourself in the face. The importance of this is often overlooked by "traditionalists".

gohrt• 12 years ago

Youare supposed to put your knife down and then use your fork in your right hand to eat; not eat with two hands like a starving savage.

valdiorn• 12 years ago

Article and research contradicts most everything else I've seen on the subject, so forgive me if I don't accept this outright.

kagamine3• 12 years ago

I have always wondered, as a leftie myself, if appearance plays a part in people making a first-impressions decision about acceptance. For example, a lot of left handers part their hair on the 'wrong' side, so to righties it looks like they look in the mirror, but not as they expect to see other people. I wonder if this has any bearing on human behavior at all.

Much as racism is often partly caused by deviation from 'the norm'. We learn to read signs in people's expressions and actions and we judge them based on their deviation from the norm. If a person has a hard to read face because their features and different from our own and those around us then it could lead to distrust or at least reticence to decide about that person.

On a completely different note, I thought this article was going to be about people whose politics were 'leftie'. Glad I read it before commenting.

robert_tweed2• 12 years ago

This is a good point and there may be something in it.

There's a semi-related, interesting phenomenon in fencing, which results in a a disproportionately large percentage of fencers being left-handed.

This is because at a beginner/intermediate level, left-handed fencers have an advantage over right-handed ones (think about how swords would meet slightly differently if the fencers are each same-handed or opposite-handed). It turns out that this creates an advantage because right-handedness (and hence, same-handedness in pairings) is still >> 50%, so left-handers get very used to fencing opposite-handed, while it tends to throws off right-handers who aren't as used to it.

The advantage goes away at a high level, but it create a bias towards more left-handers taking up and sticking at fencing, because they make more progress when starting out. They feel like they are better at fencing than other sports they might have tried, where they don't have a strategic advantage by default.

Anyway, one of the obviously related subtle effects is what happens when you reach out to shake someone's hand. If you reach out to someone opposite-handed, the result can be brief but tangible awkwardness. Little cues like that can add up to create a subconscious picture of something not being quite right, or perhaps even "sinister".

Again, like with the fencing example, the left-hander is used to this because it happens to them 90% of the time. For the right-hander, it feels like something is off because it only happens 10% of the time, so they aren't expecting it.

mempko• 12 years ago

Left handed programmer here. I used to mouse on my right until i switched 10 years ago. I never looked back. Also, it tends to piss off anyone who uses my computer, and there is a bad bad part of me that enjoys that. So maybe there is something to this whole 'sinister' business.

cafard2• 12 years ago

The Greeks, I suppose out of superstition, called the left (among other things) "aristeros", which has the look of a comparative of (the superlative) "aristos", best, noblest, etc. But Liddell and Scott say that the derivation is uncertain: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...

theonemind• 12 years ago

I remember the first time I took an upper-divison math class at my university. I never saw so many left-handed glasses-wearing males in a single spot.

So, lies, damn lies, and statistics. If average cognitive ability is lower, then I'm guessing there's a hell of a standard deviation.

Why Lefties Make Less

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