Approximately 10.6 per cent of people are left-handed, and this minority may just have a psychological edge over right-handers in competition, new research suggests.

This edge is now believed to be linked to higher competitiveness among left-handed people, and may help explain why left-handedness has persisted through human evolution, despite right-handers making up almost 90 per cent of the population.

Left-handedness has long been associated with having advantages in some sports, but psychologists at the University of Chieti‑Pescara, in Italy, set out to understand whether this really is the case, and if so, what is driving it.

They began by gathering data from more than 1,100 volunteers who completed detailed online questionnaires measuring hand preference, motivational drive and a range of personality traits.

From these responses, the team calculated each participant’s “Laterality Quotient”, a score that captures how strongly a person favours one hand over the other.

Using these results, the researchers then selected two sharply defined groups – 483 strongly right‑handed people and 50 strongly left‑handed people – and asked them to complete a second set of questionnaires.

This round probed competitive instincts and levels of anxiety or depression, testing whether a pronounced hand preference might be tied to particular psychological patterns.

Finally, to see whether these traits translated into real‑world performance, the team invited 24 left‑handers and 24 right‑handers into the lab to undertake a timed task that required participants to place nine tiny pegs into a board using only one hand.

This simple challenge was designed to reveal whether the psychological differences hinted at in the surveys might also show up in speed, dexterity or confidence under pressure.

Left‑handers emerged from the study with a distinct psychological profile: they scored noticeably higher on hyper‑competitiveness, and, unlike many right‑handers, were far less inclined to shy away from competition because of anxiety.

Yet this mental edge did not translate into superior physical performance. In the pegboard challenge, 11 of the 24 right‑handers completed the task more quickly, suggesting that whatever advantage left‑handers possess lies not in dexterity but in mindset, suggesting left-handers are in possession of a sharper appetite for challenge rather than any innate mechanical skill.

“Importantly, higher levels of hyper-competitive orientation emerged in left- compared to right-handers,” the study’s authors said.

“The minority of the human population consists of left–handers, and a possible advantage of belonging to this minority is a higher ‘surprise’ effect in fighting and in sports.”

They also suggested that belonging to a minority group may also increase frustration levels among left-handers, which could push them to compete even harder.

The research is published in the journal Scientific Reports.