Press Release - August 2009

Left-Handers Day 2009 - 13th August 2009
Through the looking glass: When left is always right

The annual Left-Handers Day for 2009 falls on Thursday 13th August and is a chance for left-handers everywhere to celebrate the advantages of being left-handed and raise awareness among righties of the daily frustrations for left-handers living in a right-handed world. The Left Handers Club will be encouraging its 70,000 members worldwide to create a Lefty Zone in their home, office or club where all tasks must be conducted left-handed – an interesting experience for right-handed friends and family!

Left-Handers Club spokesperson Lauren Milsom explains: “Many of us appreciate how awkward it is for left-handers having to use right-handed implements, or develop a good writing style, but few people are aware of the many advantages to being left-handed, and the outstanding achievements and successes of left-handers in a variety of fields. Left-Handers Day is the ideal opportunity to celebrate those advantages.”

The Left Handers Day website is at www.lefthandersday.com and has lots of ideas on how to celebrate the day, free posters to download, a left-handed quiz and loads of information about being left-handed.

A fascinating research study being published in advance of International Left-Handers Day on 13th August 2009 claims that our handedness is a major subliminal influence in the choices and decisions we make in all aspects our daily lives.

The decision making process of left-handers has been studied by Daniel Casasanto of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands, through a series of tasks comparing the preference of left and right handers to objects presented to them from the left or right. He found that righties tend to judge objects on their right side as positive and objects on their left side as negative. Lefties do the opposite, pairing positive things with their left side and negative things with their right.

Casasanto believes this is because for left-handers, the left side of any space has positive moral, intellectual, and emotional connotations whereas for righties, the right side does. That association could apply in situations ranging from whether we choose one brand of coffee over another simply because of its position on the supermarket shelves to whom we might identify as a criminal suspect because of their position in a police lineup.

“We have this illusion that we base our decisions largely on relevant and sufficient information, yet social psychology over the past decades has shown us that there are lots of other factors that shape our judgments." Casasanto said.

There is a link to more information about this research and its implications at www.lefthandersday.com

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Further information, pictures and interviews contact:-

Lauren Milsom, Left-Handers Club
E: Lauren@lefthandersclub.com T: 01737 831822

Notes to Editors:

• Lauren Milsom is a leading expert on handedness. She has worked with left-handed children for over 20 years and is author of "Your Left-Handed Child” published by Hamlyn 16th April 2008. ISBN 978-0-600-61480-7. Available online from www.anythinglefthanded.co.uk RRP £9.99 (+p&p) and from all major bookstores. 128 pages full colour.

• The Left-Handers Club is free to join from the
www.anythinglefthanded.co.uk website. Formed in 1990, the Club aims to:
- increase awareness of left-handers’ needs
- keep members in touch with research and developments
- improve education, facilities and equipment design.

• The Left-Handers Club is now the largest organisation of its kind, with more than 70,000 members worldwide. Since its formation, the Club has been responsible for a number of product design improvements, the provision of left-handed cheque books by all major banks in the U.K., and has produced a unique training video for teachers and parents of left-handed children. This video is currently used by all teacher-training colleges and a large number of schools in England.

• The Club is responsible for International Left-Handers Day, an annual event on 13th August when left-handers everywhere can celebrate their sinistrality and increase public awareness of the difficulties and advantages of being left-handed. Visit www.lefthandersday.com for more info.