ArticleEvolutionary psychology : an international journal of evolutionary approaches to psychology and behavior2011
Left-handedness and male-male competition: insights from fighting and hormonal data.
Article in Evolutionary psychology : an international journal of evolutionary approaches to psychology and behavior, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 20 citations in OpenAlex.
- Assessing the link among laterality, sex and competitiveness to verify the evolutionarily stable strategy of handedness.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Prevalence of left-handers and their role in antagonistic sports: beyond mere counts towards a more in-depth distributional analysis of ranking data.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Article
- Footedness Is Associated with Self-reported Sporting Performance and Motor Abilities in the General Population.Frontiers in psychology · 2016Article
- Opponent left-handedness does not affect fight outcomes for Ultimate Fighting Championship hall of famers.Frontiers in psychology · 2014Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Male-male competition can shape some behavioral or morphological traits of males. Here we investigate if this competition could play a role in the persistence of the polymorphism of handedness in human populations. A negative frequency-dependent selection mechanism has been hypothesized, based on the fact that left-handed men may benefit from a "surprise" advantage during fighting interactions because they are rare in human populations. This advantage may thereby enhance the probability of survival of left- handed men and/or their reproductive success through an increase in social status. In this study, we first explored the association between hand preference and lifetime fighting behavior in a population of 1,161 French men. No effect of hand preference on the probability of fighting was detected, suggesting that the innate propensity to fight does not differ between left- and right-handers. However, among men who had been involved in at least one fight during their lifetime, left-handers reported significantly more fights than right-handers. To explore the biological basis of this behavior, we also investigated the testosterone concentration in saliva samples from 64 French university students. Consistent with frequencies of fights, we found a significantly higher average testosterone concentration in left-handers than in right-handers. We suggest that these behavioral and hormonal differences may be acquired throughout life due to previous experiences in a social context and may favor the persistence of left-handers in humans.
Indexed as
Identifiers
22947980PMC10481021W2206039072What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.