Are Left-Handed People More Artistic and Creative? Here’s the Fact

VIVA – Scientists have been studying left-handedness in humans for more than a century and have discovered that it can tell us about how the human brain works differently. Since creativity is a measure of how we think, evidence that left-handed people are more creative should be found somewhere in our neural.

There is some evidences to suggest that left-handed people may be more creative and artistic than right-handed people. However, it is important to note that creativity is a complex and multi-dimensional concept, and there is no definitive measure of it.

One study published in the journal "Creativity Research Journal" found that left-handed people scored higher on measures of divergent thinking, which is a type of thinking that involves coming up with multiple solutions to a problem.

Another study published in the "Journal of Mental and Nervous Disease" found that left-handed people were overrepresented among artists, musicians, and architects.

Furthermore, a professor of Neuropsychology at Drexel University, Eric Zillmer, said that the brains of left-handed people are indeed different from right-handed people. Specifically, they show less brain lateralization than right-handed people.

Brain lateralization is the idea that the human brain is divided into two parts – the left and right hemispheres – with each part responsible for its function.

The left side is usually associated with speech, writing, arithmetic, language, and comprehension, while the right-side controls creativity, musical skills, and artistic expression, among other functions.

If a researcher triggers a conversation with you and scans your brain with an fMRI in the process, the left hemisphere (associated with language) should light up more than the right half.

That's what the researchers found for most left-handed people. For tasks involving language, the left side of the brain is more active than the right. But scientists have found that this is not the case for most left-handed people.

Most showed more activity in the right brain for language tasks. Since left-handed people rely less on the left brain, the researchers described this as indicative of a lack of brain lateralization, Zillmer stated.

In the early 2000s, several research groups found an interesting link between highly creative people such as professional musicians and visual artists, and high levels of schizotypy.

Even more, those with schizotypy also showed atypical brain lateralization, where the right brain is more active for tasks that are typically dominated by the left brain, similar to that found in right-handed and ambidextrous people.