Left-handers show higher competitiveness, study finds
Mar 1st 2026
A new study in Scientific Reports reports that left-handed people show stronger competitive traits and less competition avoidance than right-handers, offering evidence relevant to evolutionary ideas about why left-handedness persists (Prete et al., 2026).
- Researchers analyzed more than 1,100 volunteers and identified 50 strongly left-handed and 483 strongly right-handed participants using the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory.
- Left-handed participants scored higher on self-developmental competitive orientation and on hypercompetitive measures.
- Stronger right-handedness was linked to greater anxiety-driven competition avoidance.
- A follow-up experiment using a pegboard hand skill test found no association between hand skill and competitiveness, and authors say the results support but do not prove evolutionary explanations like the fighting hypothesis.