London - If you can’t resist reaching for the biscuit tin, help could be at hand.
Right-handers are drawn to things on their right, while left-handers favour items on their left, scientists have discovered.
As a result, a right-hander will find biscuits less tempting if they move them to the left, and vice versa.
Similarly, our perception of people is also affected by where they are in relation to us.
Dr Daniel Casasanto told the American Association for the Advancement of Science: “If you ask people to judge which of two job applicants you would hire, righties would on average choose the person on the right, lefties on average, the person on the left.
“This become applicable to behaviours like voting where we are asked to judge candidates whose names are on the right and left of the ballot paper.
“We found in a simulated election that lefties will choose the candidate on the left of the ballot paper about 15 percent more than righties. These invisible influences could have real impact.”
Dr Casasanto, of Chicago University, says the phenomenon could be caused by people favouring things close to the side of the body we find easiest to use.
About 13 percent of men and 11 percent of women are left-handed, compared with just three percent of those born before 1910. This could be thanks to a growing acceptance of left-handedness, which was beaten out of children in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Daily Mail