The surprising geography of American left-handedness (2015)
20 comments
·July 21, 2025bchris4
The areas with higher rates of left handedness on the map seem to correlate to the more progressive areas where you’d expect parents and teachers to not discourage it. Was kind of surprised they didn’t mention that, given they started with that anecdote.
kazinator
Why is it that right-handed people play stringed instruments such that the strings are actuated with the right hand (finger picking, flatpicking, strumming, bowing), and fingered with the left? Many left handed players reverse the arrangement.
On the other hand (pun inteneded) left-handed pianos are almost unheard of.
mcv
After the resurgence of homophobia, racism, antivax, misogyny, I've been wondering if we're undoing the last couple of centuries of civilization. I never expected the next step to be left-handedness becoming associated with evil again.
deathanatos
The archive.org link doesn't seem to have captured TFA.
mcv
Thank you! I was wondering why a one-paragraph story was posted here with the real content in two links you'd have to follow. Your version has some actual content.
sejje
Maybe the html caption under the image broke their parser
Supermancho
I do recall preferring the left hand on my first day with a pencil. However, during that first day, I remember being able to switch to use my right hand as well and it started to feel more comfortable after a very short time. The tipping point was the frustration of using my right hand and failing to be able to control it correctly. I swapped to my (then-worse) left hand and was willing to deal with the frustration better. By the second day, my right hand was too alien and I only switched back briefly in my early 30s due to injuring my left arm/hand, where I basically had pre-school level right-hand cursive.
As far as I know, I'm the only left hander in my extended family.
xrayarx
Quote from the article
One of the best available data sets on left-handedness comes from a scratch-and-sniff survey of olfactory ability mailed out to millions of National Geographic subscribers in the 1980s.
Go ahead and read that sentence again — it doesn't get any less weird the second time around.
bradley13
My parents "retrained" me to be right-handed. All primary-school things like writing, using scissors, etc. I do right-handed. For the rest? All I am is confused - some things I do right-handed, others left-handed. FWIW I was a very awkward and uncoordinated kid, which...may be related?
coderenegade
Plenty of us righties out there like this. I write, catch, throw, kick etc. as a right hander, but surf, play the drums, jump etc. like a left hander. When I learned to box as a teenager I settled for orthodox, but it could have gone either way. Never had a problem with coordination.
I think it's genetic, and probably a spectrum. My mom's family has a few lefties, and a number of righties that play traditionally left handed positions in team sports.
vaibhavkul
I too am mixed regarding doing things with different hands - for finer movements (writing, holding a spoon) I prefer using the left hand, while for stronger movements (punching, throwing a ball) I prefer using the right hand. Not sure why though, I never underwent any "retraining".
nine_k
The geographical weirdness: left-handedness is much more widespread in Northeast, with some less prominent peaks in Florida, Arizona, South Dakota. The source is suggested to be genetic.
I wonder if there's information on how many passengers of the Mayflower were left-handed.
jamesmontalvo3
> I wonder if there's information on how many passengers of the Mayflower were left-handed.
Probably 0% reported, considering the negative views towards left-handedness at the time.
irrational
My son is left handed. Nobody else in my or my wife’s family is or has been left handed, that we know of. And we don’t live in one of the mentioned areas. It seems odd, but I’ve never looked into it.
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reactordev
I’m the same. No one in my family tree going back to my great grandparents were lefties. Nor any cousins or 2nd cousins. Just me.
mcv
Me and my sister are left-handed, but nobody else in our family. And suddenly not one but two kids? (We're not twins.)
bigbacaloa
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pluto_modadic
founder effect, or bias of kindergarten teachers in that area having an outsized effect picking ambidextrous students to be left handed.
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http://web.archive.org/web/20250420182951/https://www.washin...