https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ambidexterity-and-cognitive-closure

 

Back in a more superstitious time, people believed left-handers were in league with the Devil. Now, in this age of Science, we realize that was unfair. Yes, left-handers are statistically more likely to be in league with the Devil. But so are right-handers! It's only the ambidextrous who are truly pure!

At least this is the conclusion I take from Lyle & Grillo (2020) Why Are Consistently-Handed Individuals More Authoritarian: The Role Of Need For Cognitive Closure. It discusses studies finding that consistently-handed people (ie people who are not ambidextrous) are more likely to support authoritarian governments, demonstrate prejudice against "immigrants, homosexuals, Muslims, Mexicans, atheists, and liberals", and support violations of the Geneva Conventions in hypothetical scenarios.

The authors link this to a construct called "need for cognitive closure", ie being very sure you are right and unwilling to consider alternate perspectives. They argue that something about the interaction of brain hemispheres regulates cognitive closure, and that ambidextrous people, with their weak hemispheric dominance, get less of it. They study 235 undergraduates and find results that generally confirm this hypothesis: their ambidextrous subjects support less authoritarian and racist beliefs, and this is partly