Why do left-handers earn less than right-handers?

By Alex Fradera It’s popularly believed that left-handers are uncommonly blessed with talents like high intelligence or an artistic temperament, but this is a myth. In fact, some studies even show cognitive deficits in lefties (though other research has failed to confirm this) and in terms of their take-home salaries, surveys suggest that left-handers lag behind the right-handed by as much as ten per cent, possibly indicating a difficulty in competing under commercial conditions. In a recent study in PLOS One, Marcello Sartarelli from the Universidad de Alicante attempted to replicate this deficit under controlled laboratory conditions using a simulated labour market. Lefties actually competed more strongly than expected, but they also exhibited some intriguing performance quirks linked with personality that set them apart from the right-handed majority. Sartarelli recruited 432 people, eight per cent left-handers, to play a game that captured two aspects of labour market success: putting in the appropriate effort and cutting good deals. The game was complex, but boiled down to some participants offering employment contracts to pairs of other participants who played the roles of the “workforce” in the simulation. Each workforce pair selected the contract that they thought would generate the best outcome for them. Each member of the pair then selected whether they would be a high-effort worker in attempting to fulfil the contract – which would run down their ...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Brain Cognition Occupational Social Source Type: blogs