from the what-percentage-of-people-are-right-handed? dept.
The experts assume that one reason for this preference is that emotions are primarily processed in the right hemisphere of the brain, which is linked to the left side of the body. The team led by lead author Julian Packheiser reports in the journal Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews on 26 June 2019.
International researchers have been investigating since 1960 whether and why people have a preferred side when cradling a baby. Some studies have demonstrated a preference, others have not. "In order to explain the effect, we looked for all of the studies we could find on this topic," says Julian Packheiser. The Bochum-based researchers included 40 studies in their analysis.
They ultimately found that between 66 and 72 per cent of all people hold an infant with their left arm. For right-handed people, the figure is even higher at 74 per cent, while it is only 61 per cent for left-handed people. The ratio is similar for men and women: 64 per cent of all men and 73 per cent of all women hold a baby with their left arm. "There may, of course, be links between gender and handedness," explains Packheiser. After all, men are 23 per cent more likely to be left-handed than women. "Unfortunately, this link has not been considered in any study," says the researcher.
Julian Packheiser, Judith Schmitz, Gesa Berretz, Marietta Papadatou-Pastou, Sebastian Ocklenburg. Handedness and sex effects on lateral biases in human cradling: Three meta-analyses. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 2019; 104: 30 DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2019.06.035
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 21 2019, @03:40AM (1 child)
WTF? Who pays these people for stupid pointless research studies? I want to do a research study of why my nuts itch on every other tuesday in the summertime.
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Sunday July 21 2019, @05:40AM
Lets get together and replicate the study that demonstrated "alcohol makes students drunk". After all, you cannot be confident in a research result unless an independent study confirms it.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ShadowSystems on Sunday July 21 2019, @03:48AM (5 children)
You hold the baby over your heart so it can feel & hear the soothing rhythm. It calms them, soothes them, & keeps them mostly pacified.
Now give me a cookie or I'll fingerpaint on my crib walls with the contents of my diaper.
=-)P
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 21 2019, @03:58AM (2 children)
I think it is because most people are right handed. Therefore, they naturally hold the baby in their left arm because that leaves the right arm free to do whatever needs to be done. The left-handed people then hold the baby in the left arm because they are modeling what they see others doing. But, they do it at a lower rate because they ultimately discover the utility of having their good hand free.
(Score: 3, Funny) by legont on Sunday July 21 2019, @04:08AM
I think it's because in most cars people steer with left hand while doing interesting stuff with the right one.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 21 2019, @04:31PM
It's easier for a right hander to hold a baby with the left hand while feeding the baby with a bottle using the right hand. Or putting mittens/caps etc on the baby with the right hand. Or open doors etc. Or defend the baby from harm.
I guess this is one of those "publish or perish" filler research. They might even come to the AC's conclusion some years or decades later once they're done publishing enough crap.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Sunday July 21 2019, @04:22AM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday July 21 2019, @05:46AM
s/ or / and /
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 21 2019, @04:41AM (5 children)
My experience is that I carry infants cradled in on my weak side so that I can use my strong side to grab by the throat and kick the living shit out of anyone silly enough to think that a man carrying a baby might be a good victim.
Think of it as evolution in action.
~childo
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 21 2019, @04:43AM
Like a football, but smells better.
Or, sometimes, worse.
You DO carry spare diapers, I hope?
Diaper bag makes a great place for self-defense hardware to ride as well.
~childo
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 21 2019, @05:34AM (1 child)
Why reach? Just cradle the baby with one arm and carry an uzi with the other.
(Score: 4, Funny) by JNCF on Sunday July 21 2019, @07:08AM
You've got it all wrong, you want an accurate firearm in your dominant hand. The uzi is a spray-n-pray weapon, perfect for the baby to handle.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday July 21 2019, @08:39AM
Since we are at stats, two out of three people who approached you feared you were in fact kidnapping the baby. Pity you did not let them speak.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bradley13 on Sunday July 21 2019, @05:21PM
Seriously, this is pretty obvious. Most people are right-handed. Consider: if you're working on something as a right-handed person, you will hold it steady with your left hand and use tools on it with your right hand. So: baby. Hold the baby with your left hand and feed it, or play with it, or whatever - with your right hand.
You don't need to look any farther than that - the explanation is (imho) bleedingly obvious.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday July 21 2019, @05:49AM (3 children)
Don't look at me. I outsource the holding of loud, smelly things to their parents.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 21 2019, @03:38PM
In Buzz's case, it will be outsourced to poorly motivated rest home employees.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday July 21 2019, @09:45PM (1 child)
Drove to Mt. Pleasant today, picked up my toolbox from Home Depot. A couple with two kids and an infant wandered around me multiple times. Nice looking family, really. Dad a gingery-blonde, was carrying the infant, in the wrong arm. I smiled, thinking of this submission. He saw me smiling, and beamed back at me, proud of his little bundle. Can't help wondering what he would have said if I told him he was doing it wrong. You never can tell about Texans - he may have reached for his Uzi with his left hand, and shot me full of holes!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday July 22 2019, @10:45AM
It's not the Texan bit of a new father that you need to fear, it's the sleep-deprived bit. Believe it or not, that has an even more adverse effect on the cognitive process than being a Californian (though not worse than being European).
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday July 22 2019, @09:30AM (1 child)
I had the same thought as about half the posters here: That it's because most people are right handed.
But someone else suggested that it's so that the baby's head is near the adult's heart.
IIRC, nobody really knows for sure why right-handedness is so dominant in humans, or why we have dominant hands at all. Could it be that THIS is the reason why?
That right-handers have a slight evolutionary advantage, because they carry their babies with their left hands, which means the babies get the advantages of the parental heartbeat?
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Monday July 22 2019, @07:43PM
Dogs have dominant paws, so it seems unreasonable as a general reason for hand dominance. I do like it as a potential reason for right-hand dominance in particular. Dogs have a split along male/female lines, females tending to be right-dominant and males tending to be left-dominant. Chimps are supposed to have hand dominance, but an even spread among left and right, and a higher tendency for ambidextrousness than humans. I dunno if there's a male/female split for chimps. I think the generally accepted reason for right-hand dominance in humans has to do with language being primarily processed inthe left side of the brain. I've previously considered that standardising hand dominance might have had to do with tool use, curved handles and such being fit to the groove of one standard hand side, but I don't know of any literature speculating that.