People Hack: Hand Dominance
Lifehacker pointed to a really interesting article from Newsweek [link]. Here’s the gist of it:
[W]hen volunteers read about two job candidates whose resumes were printed side-by-side, right-handers tended to choose the person described on the right, but left-handers chose the one on the left, again being unconsciously swayed by their experience of space more than the conventions of language and culture.
Apparently right-handed people prefer things on the right in general and left-handed people prefer things on the left.
This is one of those things I almost thought of before. I had noticed that in the game where you hide something in one of your hands and have another person choose which hand it’s in, you do better putting it in your right hand. I also noticed that people tended to put it in their right hand. This always confused me because I figured you’d guess whatever worked for you most of the time, but this explanation seems pretty likely given that right-handed people are more common (they face each other; the person choosing picks the hand on their right and loses because it’s the hider’s left).
I’m amused. The article is actually pretty interesting and a quick read, btw.
Just to mess with people who are easily messed with when they have too much info: scissors is the most common starting move in rock-paper-scissors; rock is the second most common opener.
