Hands, brains, feet and wages

Left-handed men are significantly more likely to suffer depression than right-handers. This new paper (pdf) estimates that among the 7% of European men over 50 who are southpaws, 25% said they had suffered a depressive episode of more than two weeks in their lives. Only 19% of right-handers said they had done so.
Curiously, among women there was no difference between lefties and righties in proneness to depression.
This suggests that handedness is not confined to hands alone, but is correlated with other personality attributes.
Further evidence of this lies in a curious fact - that left-handed men (though not women) earn more than their rightie counterparts. This paper (pdf) estimates that, in the UK, leftie men earn 5% more than righties, though leftie women earn 4% less than righties. And this paper (pdf) found that, among male American college graduates, left-handers earn 15% more than righties*.
You might think both these results are product of lefties not quite fitting into the world. This not only causes more mental illness, but also more creativity which is well-rewarded especially in graduate occupations.
Here, though, is something really weird. Left-handers’ superiority - at least at the far end of the bell curve - is especially pronounced for those who earn a living with their feet. According to this (perhaps suspect) list, Pele, Maradona, Cruyff, and Puskas are all lefties. Many good judges reckon these are the four best players of all time. If this is mere coincidence, it’s a freak one.

Comments

[Bob B]

If so, left-handedness looks very much like one of the sort of things that ought to be added to the increasingly long list of candidates for banning in order to minimise unnecessary costs falling onto the NHS.

[Peter Briffa]

There was once a Wimbledon quarter-finals line-up where everyone of the male octet were leftists.

Sometimes it helps being a freak.

[Ben Hughes]

It's entirely reasonable that left-handers excel at certain sports for the simple reason that right handers are less used to playing against left handers because they are much less common. For example in tennis, returning the spin coming off a left-handers racket is something tennis players in general are much less experienced with, so being left-handed (particularly on the serve) serves as an advantage. Rafael Nadal (#2 tennis player in the world) in fact is right handed by was trained at an early age to play left handed likely for this reason. So the advantage of left handers in this case is related to their statistical minority and not the fact that they use their left hand.

[Robert]

Isn't part of the definition of all co-incidences is that they are freaky? We wouldn't notice them otherwise.

[Bob B]

If left-handedness confers an advantage playing tennis that, surely, only compounds the already strong reasons for banning this deviation if only to restore a level playing field for all players.

[Neal]

ditto Giggs, most-capped United player of all time, is a lefty

[Bob B]

My divine revelation is that if the Great Architect of the Cosmos had intended left-handedness she would surely have made us all left-handed. The logical implication is transparent: left-handedness must be a diabolical deviation. It must be banned.

I am entirely reassured in this theological imperative by the recent breaking news that left-handed people earn more on average than us right-handers.

[Tom]

I'm left-handed but I pick my nose with my right hand.

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