Living in a Right-Hand World

We live in a man made world designed for the right handed individual. Being a right handed person is 90% more likely than being left handed, which made many researchers study why this is the case. What makes right handedness a more popular trait among human beings? Researchers have still yet to discover the true roots of this phenomenon, however their is almost suffiecient enough evidence of claims relating left handedness to their mother’s pregnancy. Some have stated that there is a correclation between the mother’s stress levels to the child’s handedness, whereas others have noted a relation between the mother’s oxygen levels during the pregnancy to the child’s handedness. Although there is still much work to be done in regards to this, researchers have ruled out several myths about one’s handedness and have discovered valuable correlations. For example being left handed DOES NOT mean that that person is more creative, which we know from one of our earlier guest lecturers.

Culturally, being left handed is stigmatized, where in some cultures the word for left is also the word for wrong, clumsy, and bad luck. Some cultures even try to change a child’s dominant hand to their right hand, this is in fact bad for the child’s developmet. Forcing a child to switch hands may lead to mixed handedness, and overall confusion for the child. This directly has correclated with poor learning development. Even if the parent does not force a child to switch their preferred dominant hand. we live in a world designed for right handed people, which therefore causes a need for the right hand to be dominant in certain respects.

This project shows photographs and digital paintings meshed together of those right handed things that children are exposed to early in life. These things, can now be specially ordered to cater to a left handed person’s needs, but by the time they can do so, they have already spent much of their childhood learning to use their right hand. I personally have experienced this confusion of handedness, and to this day struggle as a lefty to use my left hand for such tasks.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_against_left-handed_people#:~:text=In%20certain%20societies%2C%20they%20may,stupidity%2C%20or%20other%20undesirable%20qualities.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2831280/

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140602204601.htm#:~:text=Left%2Dhanded%20fetuses%20could%20show%20effects%20of%20maternal%20stress%20on%20unborn%20babies,-Date%3A%20June%202&text=Summary%3A,stressed%2C%20according%20to%20new%20research.