By Joan Raymond

Be careful next time you cast a vote. Your “handedness” might make you choose the wrong candidate, according to a research review published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

The research sheds light on the so-called “body-specificity hypothesis” which simply means that how we make decisions and how we communicate with each other is influenced not only by our minds, but by our physical bodies.

“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,” explains lead author Daniel Casasanto, Ph.D., a cognitive scientist and assistant professor at the New School for Social Research in New York.  

Experiments show that right-handed people tend to view things situated on the right hand side of a page, for example, as being more positive. And if you’re a leftie, well, you favor those things on the left hand side.  When participants were asked which of two products to buy, which of two job applicants to hire, or which of two alien creatures looked more trustworthy, right-handers routinely chose the product, person, or creature they saw on the right side of the page. Left-handers preferred the ones on left hand side of the page.

Interestingly, right-handers who had their dominant hand temporarily handicapped in the laboratory actually started to think like “lefties,” showing preference for the left side. That’s because we’re most comfortable using our dominant hand, according to the research, and we tend to view the things we are most comfortable with as being positive or good.

About 90 percent of the population is right-handed. So if you want to get votes or sell products, the right side of a page or a computer screen may be your best bet, says Casasanto.

The two most recent presidential debates provided some fodder for the researchers. The 2004 candidates, John Kerry and George W. Bush, are right handed and the 2008 candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, are left handers.  The right-handed 2004 candidates made a greater proportion of right-hand gestures when expressing positive ideas. And when it came to the negative, they used their left hands. For the left-handed 2008 candidates, the opposite was true.

The researchers also wanted to find out if the meanings of action verbs actually differed between righties” and lefties.” Using sophisticated brain mapping techniques, the researchers found there are distinct differences between right and left handers when hearing  a word like “throw.”

“People tend to understand verbs as referring to actions they would perform with their particular bodies,” says Casasanto. “In this sense, people with different bodies understand the same verbs to mean something different."

Which, of course, begs the question, how we do understand each other?

“The short answer is we don’t,” says Casasanto. “Most of the time, we feel like we understand each other because what a word means to me, is close enough to what it means to you, but it’s never the same, and what a word means in your mind may depend on quirks of your body.” 

More strange stories on what handedness says about us:

• New book explores the mysteries of southpaws
• Right-handed people don't care for reggae
• White House leans again to the left(ies)

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.

The hand you use to write, brush your teeth, and throw a ball may also tip people off to your taste in music, a new study reveals.

An Ohio researcher has found that people with a strong preference for using their right hand for most everything they do, seem to like popular types of music and tend to shy away from less familiar genres, especially bluegrass and reggae.

Strong righties, the study suggests, may be less open to new musical experiences and tend to gravitate toward styles they're more familiar with.

The research also found that people who are mixed-handed, meaning they use their non-dominant hand for at least two activities but it does not mean ambidextrous, reported broader musical interests. They showed greater "open-earedness," or a stronger liking of unpopular musical styles and more willingness to listen to them.

Many factors influence our music preferences, so why would hand choice matter? In part, it's affected by what's happening between the ears -- in the brain.

"Mixed-handers are more 'in touch' with a wide variety of right hemisphere processes," says study author Stephen Christman, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University of Toledo in Toledo, Ohio. The right hemisphere of the brain plays a key role in updating thoughts and beliefs and in allowing us to see things in new ways, he explains, while the left hemisphere tends to stick with the tried and true.

Christman notes that about 80 percent of left-handers are mixed-handers while about 60 percent of righties are strong-handed.

The study, published in the journal Psychology of Music, looked at 92 college students who completed a hand preference survey. Forty-nine students were strong right-handers and 43 were mixed-handed.

Four participants were strongly left-handed, too small a group for statistical analysis. But  other studies have found that the taste preferences of strong left-handers tend to resemble strong right-handers more than mixed-handers.

Students were asked to rate how often they listened to 21 different musical genres and their enjoyment of them. Nine were considered "popular" based on recording industry sales figures and the rest were "unpopular." Popular categories included classic rock, heavy metal, country and rap/hip-hop. Unpopular genres ranged from jazz and world to folk and reggae.

The top three musical choices of strong right-handers were R&B, modern pop and alternative rock; mixed-handers favored R&B followed by alternative rock and modern rock.

Although this study looked at college students, Christman suspects his findings would still apply to middle-age and older adults. He says "many of our enduring musical preferences are formed during our high school and college years, and they persist into adulthood."

Still, those interests can expand. Christman advises strong-handed people to keep exposing yourself to new forms of music and listening to unfamiliar genres. "Give the music a little time, and you may find yourself developing a liking for it and rewarded by broader musical horizons."

That's what happened to him. Christman's musical tastes have long favored acoustic/folk-based genres. But when his daughter started bringing home CDs by Eminem and Ludacris, the mixed-hander quickly developed an intense liking for rap and hip-hop.

What's been your experience? Are you right-handed, left-handed, mixed-handed? What kind of music is your favorite?

Want more weird health news? Find The Body Odd on Facebook.