Survey - General

According to a survey conducted the no of female lefties is more compared to the no of male lefties. It was been questioned to the families about handedness prevailling in their family memebers to see whether being left handed runs in families. No one has yet been able to discover a gene that causes left handedness but some anecdotal evidence indicates that it runs in families.

According to this survey, in total, 11% of all left-handers' direct relatives were also left-handed. The handedness of their parents was slightly higher then the generally accepted level of 10% of population being left-handed. Left-handedness seems to reduce with additional children, both with the person's own brothers and sisters and their own children. Left-handedness among grandparents is below average current levels. This may be due to the fact that at the time they were young, left-handedness was much less accepted and many people were forcibly changed to the right. Only 1.4% of left-handers in the survey had both parents left-handed, 24% had one left-handed parent and 75% had two right-handed parents.

Another survey indicated the use of left hand for doing various tasks in our day to day life. Writing is the most common indicator of handedness so we can expect a very high percentage of people who consider themselves left-handed to use that hand for writing. Where left-handers have a free choice, they usually use their left-hand, giving high percentages for all the tasks where the "tools" are ambidextrous, such as brushing hair. The low percentage for using scissors probably reflects the lack of availability of left-handed scissors causing many people to change their hand rather than struggling with backwards scissors that don't cut properly. There is a very low percentage of people who eat left-handed with knife and fork (i.e. with the knife in their left hand and fork in the right). We don't find this surprising as it is consistent to always feed yourself with your dominant hand - 95% of left-handers use a spoon on its own in their left hand and 74% also use a fork in their left hand. We think there has been some historic mistake here - using the fork in your left hand should be called "eating left-handed" and it is the right-handers who have got it all wrong and change their feeding hand depending on whether they are using a spoon or a fork.

After questioning the left handers regarding effects of being left handed Some research has shown that left-handers are more intelligent and we certainly seem to think so ourselves, with 58% of left-handers considering themselves more intelligent than average. The same goes for creativity, with 48% considering themselves more creative than average. Having 85% considering themselves more awkward or clumsy than average was a surprise - we thought that it was right-handers who thought that about us. However, it does show the extent to which living in a right-handed world has a negative effect on us.