Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey: relation between societal tightness scores, left-handedness rates, and COVID-19 outcomes in US states

ABSTRACT

As the percentage of right-handers increases in a state, the tightness of that state’s culture, as measured, also increases. The relations between handedness, tightness, and various COVID measures (cases per 100,000, vaccination rates, hospitalization rates, death rates, and mask wearing adherence) were examined. Left-handedness rates and tightness both marginally predicted COVID cases and significantly predicted vaccination rates (more right-handers and more tightness associated with higher COVID rates and lower vaccination rates), only left-handedness rates predicted mask wearing adherence (more left-handers associated with increased adherence), only tightness predicted death rates (more tightness associated with higher death rates), and neither handedness or tightness predicted hospitalizations. Results are discussed in terms of the connection between consistent right-handedness and decreased cognitive flexibility and its implication for sociopolitical outcomes, and implications for the framing of public health messaging are presented.

KEYWORDS:

• Handedness
• cognitive flexibility
• COVID-19
• vaccine
• public health

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

All of the data analyzed in this manuscript are publicly available. The data came from the following sources:

Some of the data were derived from public domain resources. These data were derived from the following resources available in the public domain: The COVID (cases per 100,000), vaccination (% vaccinated), and hospitalization (hospitalizations per 100,000) data were gathered on 6 May 2021, from https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/. The death rate data (deaths per 100,000) were gathered on 8 June 2021, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/1103688/coronavirus-covid19-deaths-us-by-state/. Additional data are available within published articles or their supplementary materials. The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the following articles and/or their supplementary material: Mask wearing adherence data were obtained from Fischer et al. (2021). Handedness data for the 48 continental US states were obtained from McManus (2009). Tightness scores for the 48 continental US states were obtained from Harrington and Gelfand (2014).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.