Handedness predicts Conservative-Republican preference and eliminates relations of Big Five personality to political orientation using the 48 contiguous American states as analytical units

ABSTRACT

The two present nomothetic studies focused on the period from 1996 to 2012 to determine relations between handedness and political orientation using the 48 contiguous American states as analytical units. The estimated percentage of left-handers in each state operationally defined handedness. A composite measure of Conservative-Republican preference was created from CBS/New York Times/Gallup polls of state resident conservatism and the percent in each state voting Republican in each presidential election from 1996 to 2012. Study 1 showed that state levels of left-handedness correlated to an extremely high degree with Conservative-Republican preference (r = −.80). As well, with common demographic differences between states reflected in socioeconomic status, White population percent, and urban population percent controlled through multiple regression, handedness still accounted for an additional 37.2% of the variance in Conservative-Republican preference. Study 2 found that each of the Big Five personality variables correlated significantly with handedness and with Conservative-Republican preference, but in the opposite direction. Furthermore, Study 2 demonstrated quite surprisingly that all Big Five personality relations to Conservative-Republican preference were eliminated when handedness was controlled in multiple regression equations. For all regression equations, the global Moran’s I test specifically developed for detecting residual spatial autocorrelation indicated no significant spatial autocorrelation.

KEYWORDS:

• Handedness
• conservatism
• Republican
• states
• Big Five

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 One of the peer reviewers, self-identified as Dr. Chris McManus, reanalyzed the data using the Cliff and Ord (1981) approach to the adjustment downward in the degrees of freedom for a correlation when there is a significant spatial autocorrelation for one or both variables in a correlation. The p value for the correlation of -.80 was reduced to .016, indicating that the correlation was still statistically significant with this adjustment for spatial autocorrelation.

2 When I conducted the present research, I assumed that I was alone in recognizing this potential data pattern because I could find no published work suggesting such a connection between handedness and political preference. However, during the peer review process, I learned that Dr. Chris McManus of University College London had explored similar connections between Republican preference, handedness, and Big Five personality in a presentation titled “Genes, Geography, and Handedness” at the Tarragon Laterality Conference in Tarragona, Spain, on February 11, 2013. Dr. McManus found that the correlation between handedness and voting Republican among the 48 contiguous states was a highly significant r = −.74. However, spatial autocorrelation was not considered at that time and no published article followed.