Studies show that the left side of your face is more attractive than the right.

Next time you’re posing for a photo, keep this in mind…Showing the left side of your face can make you look more attractive. In a new study, people rated photos of the left side of the face as more attractive than the right side.
Why the weird preference? It could be that the left side communicates more emotion, because it’s controlled by the right hemisphere of the brain, which is considered more emotional than the left side of the brain. Everyone jokes about having a “good” side, but now there’s a science to it!

Face Symmetry and Beauty: How Important is It, Really? »

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For the teachers out there…

Over many years we have been encouraging teacher training
organisations to give more consideration to the requirement
of left-handed children and providing information to help
raise teachers’ awareness of the issues.  There are a few
simple things teachers can do in the classroom to make a
dramatic difference to left-handers in their early years
at school and avoid problems as they develop through the
education system.

These are basic things such as:

* Sitting a left-handed child on the left side of writing
  areas so they do not bump elbows with the child next to them

* Demonstrating a correct writing grip and encouraging an
  effective writing position

* Having left-handed scissors and knowing how to use them.

* Understanding that left-handers will form some letters in
  a different direction to right-handers.

(Source: anythinglefthanded.co.uk)

The Health Risks of Being Left-Handed Lefties Face Chance Of ADHD, Other Disorders; Brain Wiring Holds Clues

Left-handers have been the subject of curiosity, stigma and even fear over the centuries. Researchers now, however, are recognizing the scientific importance of understanding why people use one hand or the other to write, eat or toss a ball.

Modern lefty lore says left-handers are smarter, more creative and have an advantage over righties. But is it true? WSJ’s Christina Tsuei looks into the science of lefties.

Handedness, as the dominance of one hand over the other is called, provides a window into the way our brains are wired, experts say. And it may help shed light on disorders related to brain development, like dyslexia, schizophrenia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, which are more common in left-handed people.

Other recent research suggests that mixed-handedness—using different hands for daily tasks and not having a dominant one—may be even more strongly linked than left-handedness to ADHD and possibly other conditions.

About 10% of people are left-handed, according to expert estimates. Another 1% of the population is mixed-handed. What causes people not to favor their right hand is only partly due to genetics—even identical twins, who have 100% of the same genes, don’t always share handedness.

More important, researchers say, are environmental factors—especially stress—in the womb. Babies born to older mothers or at a lower birth weight are more likely to be lefties, for example. And mothers who were exposed to unusually high levels of stress during pregnancy are more likely to give birth to a left-handed child. A review of research, published in 2009 in the journal Neuropsychologia, estimated that about 25% of the variability in handedness is due to genetics.

• Left-handed people make up about 10% of the population, while 1% of the population appear not to be dominant with either hand, known as mixed-handed.

•Being left-handed is only partially genetic.

For reasons not clearly understood, handedness depends mainly on how a baby’s brain develops while in the womb.

• On average there is no difference in intelligence between right-and left-handed people. But lefties do better on an element of creativity known as divergent thinking.

Enlarge Image

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President Obama

•Six of the last 12 U.S. presidents, including Barack Obama and George H. W. Bush, have been lefties.

• Left-handed people earn on average 10% lower salaries than righties, according to a recent study. Findings of some earlier studies on income have been mixed.

•Despite popular misperceptions, lefties aren’t more accident prone than right-handed people and don’t tend to die at a younger age.

•Left-handedness has been linked to increased risk of certain neurodevelopmental disorders like schizophrenia and ADHD. Mixed-handedness is even more strongly associated with ADHD.

•Most people’s brains have a dominant side. More symmetrical brains of mixed-handed people may explain the link to some neural disorders.

Associated Press

President Bush

On average there is no significant difference in IQ between righties and lefties, studies show, belying popular perceptions. There is some evidence that lefties are better at divergent thinking, or starting from existing knowledge to develop new concepts, which is considered an element of creativity. And left-handed people have salaries that on average are about 10% lower than righties, according to recent research performed at Harvard University that analyzed large income data bases, although findings of some earlier studies were mixed.

Left-handedness appears to be associated with a greater risk for a number of psychiatric and developmental disorders. While lefties make up about 10% of the overall population, about 20% of people with schizophrenia are lefties, for example. Links between left-handedness and dyslexia, ADHD and some mood disorders have also been reported in research studies.

The reasons for this aren’t clear. Scientists speculate it could be related to a concept known as brain lateralization. The brain has two halves. Each performs primarily separate, specialized functions, such as language processing, which mainly takes place in the left hemisphere. There is lots of communication between the hemispheres.

Typically in right-handers, the brain’s left side is dominant. But this tendency doesn’t hold up with lefties, as scientists previously believed. Some 70% of lefties rely on the left hemisphere for their language centers, a key brain function, says Metten Somers, a psychiatrist and researcher who studies brain lateralization at Utrecht University Medical Center in the Netherlands. This doesn’t appear to present problems, scientists say.

The other 30% of lefties appear to exhibit either a right-dominant or distributed pattern, Dr. Somers says. They may be more prone to impaired learning or functioning, and at greater risk for brain disorders, he says.

Hemisphere dominance is typical and more efficient. Symmetry, in which neither side is dominant, is believed linked to disorders, researchers say. People with schizophrenia, for instance, exhibit more symmetrical activation of their brain hemispheres than those without the disorder, studies show.

In a 2008 study, Alina Rodriguez, a psychology professor at Mid Sweden University in Östersund who studies handedness, brain development and ADHD, found that left- or mixed-handedness in children was linked to a greater risk of difficulty with language as well as ADHD symptoms. In another study published last year in Pediatrics, involving nearly 8,000 Finnish children, Dr. Rodriguez found that mixed-handedness rather than left-handedness was linked to ADHD symptoms.

And knowing that a child was mixed-handed and had ADHD symptoms at age 8 helped predict much more accurately than just knowing they had symptoms at that age whether the child would continue to have symptoms at age 16. (What happens when people are forced to switch from writing with their dominant hand to the other isn’t well known, experts say.)

Research that suggests that there is a link between favoring the left hand and an increased risk of bipolar disorder and ADHD, among other conditions. Emily Nelson has details on Lunch Break.

One reason that not more is known about lefties is that many studies of how the brain works prohibit left-handers from participating because their brain wiring is known to be different, says Robin Nusslock, a psychology professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., who uses neuroimaging to study mood disorders.

Agence France Presse/Getty Images

Lefties have an advantage in sports such as tennis, fencing and baseball, when up against a righthanded competitor, but not in noninteractive sports such as gymnastics.

A potential pathway between prenatal stress and brain wiring could be cortisol, the body’s main stress hormone, which can interfere with brain development, says Carsten Obel, a professor at the public-health department at Aarhus University in Denmark who has conducted research on the prenatal environment and risk of disease. Cortisol is able to pass over the placenta barrier to influence the baby.

Several studies show that stressful life events, such as the death of a loved one or job loss, during pregnancy increase the risk of having non-right-handed children. In one study of 834 Danish mothers and their 3-year-old children, Dr. Obel and his colleagues found that mothers who reported multiple stressful events during their third trimester of pregnancy and experienced distress were more than three times as likely to have a mixed-handed child, 17% compared with 5%, according to the 2003 paper published in Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology.

Another large study followed 1,700 Swedish mothers and children until the kids were 5 years old. It found that mothers with depressive symptoms or who underwent stressful life events while pregnant were more likely to have left- or mixed-handed children. The work was published by Dr. Rodriguez and her colleagues in 2008 in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

Experts suggest that left- and mixed-handedness could be used as a risk factor for possible psychiatric or developmental conditions, along with behavioral difficulties, such as having a hard time in school. The presence of such risk factors could prompt early evaluation for those conditions, they say.

—Christina Tsuei contributed to this article.

A version of this article appeared Dec. 6, 2011, on page D1 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Health Risks Of Being Left-Handed.

Lefties vs. Righties: How we decide differently

We like to think that we make decisions based on our ideas of right and wrong — and we do, to an extent. But according to recent research, our choices may also be influenced by something as simple as whether we’re right or left handed.

That’s because right-handed people are more drawn to things on the right side of a screen or page, while left-handed people look to the left. Cognitive scientist Daniel Casasanto of The New School for Social Research says it’s part of the “body-specificity hypothesis” — the idea thatour physical bodies affect the decisions we make and the way we communicate with one another. One of the easiest ways to measure this hypothesis is by looking at whether a person is a righty or a lefty. 

[Related: 7 ways to tell what someone is thinking just by looking at their eyes] 

“Handedness is a good tool (to use) because it’s easily measurable, and our hands our important in how we interact with the physical world,” Casasanto explained to MSNBC. 

In his study, which was published in a recent edition Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, Casasanto found that people tend to prefer the things that they see or experience on the same side as their dominant hand. 

“People like things better when they are easier to perceive and interact with,” he says. Right-handers interact with their environment more easily on the right than on the left, so they come to associate “good” with “right” and “bad” with “left,” he explained.

[Related: Are left-handers more likely to have health problems?]

“Since about 90 percent of the population is right-handed, people who want to attract customers, sell products, or get votes should consider that the right side of a page or a computer screen might be the ‘right’ place to be,” he added.

We even tend to use our dominant side to differentiate positive ideas from negative ones. In 2004, presidential candidates John Kerry and George W. Bush — both of whom are right-handed — gestured more often with their right hands when expressing positive thoughts or ideas. In 2008, both Barack Obama and John McCain were left-handed, and both candidates used their left hands more often when expressing something positive. 

The association with positivity extends to the choices everyday people make as well. When Casasanto asked study participants to decide between two products to buy, two job applicants to hire, or two alien creatures to trust, right-handed participants regularly chose the ones on the right side of the page, while south-paws chose the ones on the left. 

That influence seems to extend beyond the physical world, influencing even abstract ideas like intelligence and honesty. Which means that it affects the way we understand one another as well, Casasanto says 

“Most of the time, we feel like we understand each other because what a word means to me, is close enough to what it means to you,” he says. “But it’s never the same, and what a word means in your mind may depend on quirks of your body.” 

While the preference seems to hold true even for kids as young as 5 years old, it isn’t absolute. People who are right-hand dominant but lose the use of that hand, even temporarily, start to associate “good” with “left” instead of “right.” 

“After a few minutes of fumbling with their right hand, righties start to think like lefties,” Casasanto said in a statement. “If you change people’s bodies, you change their minds.” 

(Source: Yahoo!)

Left handed cartoon characters

While most cartoon characters are either right-handed or change hands to fit whatever makes the best pose for a particular frame, we have noticed that there seem to be quite a few cartoon characters that are clearly and consistently left-handed. Examples include:

• Bart Simpson, Ned Flanders and Mr Burns from The Simpsons (and, occasionally, Marge)
• (The show’s creator, Matt Groening, is himself left-handed)
• Chuckie from Rugrats
• Link – the sword-wielding hero from The Legend of Zelda
• Chris Griffin from Family Guy
• Doug Funnie from Doug
• Arnold from Hey Arnold!and if we include puppets as well:
• Kermit the Frog from The Muppets
  (a creation of the late Jim Henson, also left-handed)
• Bear in the Big Blue House

Read More

(Source: anythinglefthanded.co.uk)