The long-standing belief that left-handed people are more creative than their right-handed peers may not be grounded in scientific fact, according to a new study published in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin and Review.
Researchers from Cornell University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong reviewed 1,000 scientific papers and found no substantial evidence to support the idea that left-handed individuals possess a unique creative edge. The analysis found that such assumptions likely stem from cognitive biases and selective reporting.
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Left-handed people make up roughly 10% of the global population and are often over-represented in artistic fields such as music and visual arts. This has contributed to the widely held stereotype of the “tortured artist”, a link between left-handedness, creativity, and mental illness.
Daniel Casasanto, senior author of the study and associate professor of psychology at Cornell, argued that this belief is the result of “statistical cherry-picking” and a focus on specific professions. “The idea that left-handedness, art, and mental illness go together (what we call the ‘myth of the tortured artist’) has been appealing, but it’s based on flawed reasoning,” he said.
In fact, the study found that right-handed individuals performed better on tests measuring divergent thinking in standardised lab settings.
“People generalised that there are all these left-handed artists and musicians, so lefties must be more creative. But if you do an unbiased survey of lots of professions, then this apparent lefty superiority disappears,” Casasanto explained. “The claim simply isn’t supported when you look at the literature as a whole.”
