Abstract
Left-handers may have strategic advantages over right-handers in interactive sports and innate superior abilities that are beneficial for sports. Previous studies relied on differing criteria for handedness classification and mostly did not investigate mixed preferences and footedness. Footedness appears to be less influenced by external and societal factors than handedness. Utilizing latent class analysis and structural equation modeling, we investigated in a series of studies (total N > 15300) associations of handedness and footedness with self-reported sporting performance and motor abilities in the general population. Using a discovery and a replication sample (ns = 7658 and 5062), Study 1 revealed replicable beneficial effects of mixed-footedness and left-footedness in team sports, martial arts and fencing, dancing, skiing, and swimming. Study 2 (n = 2592) showed that footedness for unskilled bipedal movement tasks, but not for skilled unipedal tasks, was beneficial for sporting performance. Mixed- and left-footedness had effects on motor abilities that were consistent with published results on better brain interhemispheric communication, but also akin to testosterone-induced effects regarding flexibility, strength, and endurance. Laterality effects were only small. Possible neural and hormonal bases of observed effects need to be examined in future studies.
Highlights
Hand preference is a long studied topic in sports science, suggesting that left-handers may have an advantage over right-handers in various interactive sports, i.e., sports that involve the direct confrontation with opponents (e.g., Grouios et al, 2000, 2002a)
We examined whether footedness may be a two-factor, rather than a one-factor, construct (e.g., Kalaycıoglu et al, 2008), and whether different factors of footedness were differentially associated with sporting performance
Materials Handedness and footedness were assessed with four items each out of the Lateral Preference Inventory (LPI; Coren, 1993)
Summary
Hand preference is a long studied topic in sports science, suggesting that left-handers may have an advantage over right-handers in various interactive sports, i.e., sports that involve the direct confrontation with opponents (e.g., Grouios et al, 2000, 2002a). While there are further accounts of left-handedness being advantageous in, for example, tennis (Loffing et al, 2012a; Breznik, 2013), basketball (Lawler and Lawler, 2011), or cricket (Brooks et al, 2004), there are accounts that left-handers are only overrepresented in the expert domains of some sports, but are at the same time not more successful than right-handers The advantage of being lefthanded appears to be declining in some professional sports in recent years (e.g., in tennis; Loffing et al, 2012a; Breznik, 2013; but see Loffing and Hagemann, 2015, for evidence of an increase of left-handed boxing)
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