When about to do something, left-handers tend to dither, says Lynn Wright, a behavioural psychologist at the University of Abertay Dundee, UK, who led the study. “Right-handers tend to jump in a bit.”

Compared to right-handers, lefties and women were likelier to agree with statements such as, “I worry about making mistakes” and “Criticism or scolding hurts me quite a bit”. All groups responded similarly to statements such as “I often act on the spur of the moment” and “I crave excitement and new sensations”, Wright’s team found.

The results could be due to wiring differences in the brains of left-handers and right-handers, she says. Research

suggests that handedness is a matter of degree (see "Edinburgh handedness inventory"). But in left-handers the right half of the brain is dominant, and it is this side that seems to control negative aspects of emotion. In right-handers the left brain dominates.