Being left-handed means you are more likely to believe in the paranormal, a new study claims.
Left-handers have had a pretty rough deal in the past.
Many people used to believe that being left handed was a sign of the devil, or meant that you are deviant in some way.
While (thankfully) this kind of thing has died out, there are some fairly interesting differences between lefties and righties.
A new study published in the journal Evolutionary Psychological Science, has found that left handed folks’ brains are wired differently.
This does not lean to the good or the bad in any way at all, but it does mean one thing – that you are more likely to believe in the paranormal.
Not only that, but interestingly the study found that lefties are less likely to believe in God (maybe it was the hundreds of years of being persecuted that put them off).
The researchers found a connection with left handed people and traits such as atheism, but also schizophrenia, and autism.
IFL Science reports:
“Essentially, people who identify as religious tend to have fewer genetic mutations. They are, therefore, less likely than their non-religious peers to be left-handed or have a genetic condition such as autism and schizophrenia.”
Edward Dutton of the Ulster Institute for Social Research was lead author on the study. He points out that in the past, being religious was seen as a genetic probability, and that people who weren’t religious deviate from the norm.
Being ‘normal’ in all other aspects of life meant you were more likely to live longer, and so as a rule more ‘normal’ genes made it through the gene pool.
Because of this lack of a ‘God believing’ gene, therefore it is statistically more likely that a left handed person will have allegiances with the supernatural, rather than the religious world.
“By contrast, atheists and believers in the paranormal would, disproportionately, never have reached adulthood or never have been born, because these beliefs, though very different, are partly an expression of the breakdown of selection and thus of rising mutational load,”
Because it is statistically less likely that you are born left-handed, there are naturally less of these genes to go round. The left handers that have made it through to today are hardy and deserving of a place in today’s world, when they faced so much oppression in the past.
Famous lefties include Barack Obama, Mozart and Marie Curie.
