Rats! Many lefties may be thinking, “I thought I had an easy advantage there… I was born creative!” But science journalist Tibi Puiu reports at ZME Science,

A team of psychologists led by Daniel Casasanto at Cornell University combed through more than a century of research, analyzing decades of experiments and occupational surveys. Their conclusion is quite clear: being left-handed does not make a person more creative. In fact, when measured in lab tests or by professional representation across creative fields, right-handers often have the slight edge.

“Being Left-Handed Might Not Make You More Creative After All,” July 7, 2025

From the Abstract of the paper:

However, we found no evidence that left- or mixed-handers are more creative than right-handers; on the contrary, right-handers scored statistically higher on one standard test of divergent thinking (the Alternate Uses Test). Additionally, although left- and mixed-handers may be overrepresented in Art and Music, they are underrepresented in creative professions, in general. Both right and left-handers tend to believe that left-handers are more creative, but this belief is not supported by the available empirical evidence.

Morgan, O., Zhao, S. & Casasanto, D. Handedness and creativity: Facts and fictions. Psychon Bull Rev (2025). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-025-02717-2

So why is the belief so widespread?

Puiu offers,

One answer lies in something Casasanto and his team call “left-handed exceptionalism.” Lefties make up just about 10% of the population. Creative geniuses are rare too. When these two rare traits overlap — as they do with da Vinci or Hendrix — it feels meaningful, even if it’s just a coincidence.

M.C. Escher (1878–1972), for example, was naturally left-handed but he saw that mainly as a fascinating phenomenon. The school he attended thought otherwise and made him learn to draw right-handed so, like many lefties, he became ambidextrous.

Puiu has a better idea: He stresses that none of this means that lefties are less creative: “Creativity, it turns out, is less about which hand you use and more about how you use your mind.”