The choice you make may depend on whether you’re right- or left-handed. We think that we make decisions based on our ideas of right and wrong, but according to recent research, our choices may also be influenced by something as simple as whether we’re right or left handed. In a February 29, 2013 article from Yahoo.com Lylah Alphonse discusses how people tend to decide they like or dislike certain things.
Cognitive scientist Daniel Casasanto of The New School for Social Research says it’s part of the “body-specificity hypothesis” — the idea that our physical bodies affect the decisions we make and the way we communicate with one another. One of the easiest ways to measure this hypothesis is by looking at whether a person is a righty or a lefty.
“Handedness is a good tool (to use) because it’s easily measurable, and our hands our important in how we interact with the physical world,” Casasanto explained to MSNBC.
In his study, which was published in a recent edition Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, Casasanto found that people tend to prefer the things that they see or experience on the same side as their dominant hand.
“People like things better when they are easier to perceive and interact with,” he says. Right-handers interact with their environment more easily on the right than on the left, so they come to associate “good” with “right” and “bad” with “left,” he explained.
“Since about 90 percent of the population is right-handed, people who want to attract customers, sell products, or get votes should consider that the right side of a page or a computer screen might be the ‘right’ place to be,” he added.
The association with positivity extends to the choices everyday people make as well. When Casasanto asked study participants to decide between two products to buy, two job applicants to hire, or two alien creatures to trust, right-handed participants regularly chose the ones on the right side of the page, while south-paws chose the ones on the left.
Keep this information in mind when you are creating websites, marketing tools or just want to connect with your patients better.