The impact of handedness on health risk behaviours and socio-economic outcomes

Left-handedness has long been associated with a range of negative attributes, including increased mental illness, criminal behaviour, and substance use. As previous reports have focussed on clinical and/or pathological samples, the present study drew on a large, representative, longitudinal study of Australians to assess the role of handedness in predicting mental illness, jail time, alcohol consumption, income, and gambling. The 15,376 respondents that had their handedness recorded in the 2016 wave of the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia longitudinal survey were included in the current study and the person-years of the outcome variables were assessed via responses to previous waves of the annually administered survey. Contrary to previous research we found little evidence of handedness-related effects. Though left-handers reported more risky drinking occasions (4.11 person-years) than right-handers (3.23 person-years), and more high-risk drinking occasions (0.65 vs 0.37 person years), handedness did not predict alcohol consumption or any of the other factors in regression models that controlled for age and sex. As such, the negative factors found in clinical/pathological samples of left-handers were not evident in these general Australian population data. The role of stigma in increasing the likelihood of participating in the outcomes of interest in the past is discussed.