Abstract
Previous work has shown that left-handers are overrepresented among juvenile offenders. The present study was designed to test whether left-handers are also overrepresented among violent juvenile offenders. However, opposite to expectation, the results showed that left-handed offenders scored lower than right-handed offenders on the Violence Scale, a measure of the violence potential of offenses read from the legal record. The unexpected effect was consistent over four sex-ethnicity subgroups. Possible explanations concerned sex-handedness interactions and hemisphericity effects.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Andrew, J. M. (1974). Violent crime indices among community-retained delinquents.Crim. Justice Behav. 1: 123–130.
Andrew, J. M. (1977a). Delinquents and the Tapping Test.J. Clin. Psychol. 33, 786–791.
Andrew, J. M. (1977b). Delinquency: Intellectual im balance?Crim. Just. Behav. 4:99–104.
Andrew, J. M. (1977c). Violence and the Tapping Test.Crime et/and Just. 5(3): 225–231.
Andrew, J. M. (1978a). Laterality on the Tapping Test among legal offenders.J. Clin. Child Psychol. 7: 149–150.
Andrew, J. M. (1978b). Violence among delinquents by family intactness and size.Soc. Biol. 25: 243–250.
Andrew, J. M. (1978c). The classic Wechsler P-V sign and violent crime.Crime et/and Just.6 246–248.
Bakan, P. (1973). Left-handedness and alcoholism.Percept. Motor Skills 36: 514.
Blair, D. (1975). Medicolegal implications of the terms “psychopath,” “psychopathic personality” and “psychopathic disorder” (Part 2).Med. Sci. Law 15(2): 110–123.
Bridges, G. S., and Lisagor, N. S. (1975). Scaling seriousness: An evaluation of magnitude and category scaling techniques.J. Crim. Law Criminol. 66: 215–221.
Denckla, M. B. (1973). Development of speed in repetitive and successive finger-movements in normal children.Dev. Med. Child Neurol. 15: 635–645.
Fitzhugh, K. B. (1973). Some neuropsychological features of delinquent subjects.Percept. Motor Skills 36: 494.
Flor-Henry, P. (1978). Gender, hemispheric specialization and psychopathology.Soc. Sci. Med. 12B: 155–162.
Geffen, G. (1976). Development of hemispheric specialization for speech perception.Cortex 12: 337–346.
Gur, R. E. (1977). Motoric laterality imbalance in schizophrenia.Arch. Gen. Psychiat. 34: 33–37.
Kellar, S. L., and Carlson, K. A. (1977). Development of an index to evaluate programs in a correctional setting.Canad. J. Criminol. Correct. 19(3): 273–277.
Kimura, D., and Vanderwolf, C. H. (1970). The relation between hand preference and the performance of individual finger movements by left and right hands.Brain 93: 769–774.
King, L. N., and Young, Q. D. (1978). Increased prevalence of seizure disorders among prisoners.J. Am. Med. Assoc. 239: 2674–2675.
Klein, M. W., Rosensweig, S. L., and Bates, R. (1975). The ambiguous juvenile arrest.Criminology 13: 78–89.
Klove, H., and Reitan, R. M. (1958). The effect of dysphasia and spatial distortion on Wechsler-Bellevue results.Arch. Neurol. Psychiat. 80: 708–713.
Landrigan, P. J., Whitworth, R. H., Baloh, R. W., Staehling, N. W., Barthel, W. F., and Rosenblum, B. F. (1975). Neuropsychological dysfunction in children with chronic low-level lead absorption.Lancet 7909: 708–712.
Levy, J., and Reid, M. (1976). Variations in writing posture and cerebral organization.Science 194: 337–339.
Lewis, D. O. (1976). Delinquency, psychomotor epileptic symptoms, and paranoid ideation: A triad.Am. J. Psychiat. 133: 1395–1398.
Monroe, R. E. (1970).Episodic Behavioral Disorders: A Psychodynamic and Neurophysiologic Analysis, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Newcombe, F., and Ratcliff, G. (1973). Handedness, speech lateralization and ability.Neuropsychologia 11: 399–407.
Pontius, A. A. (1974). Basis for a neurological test of frontal lobe system functioning up to adolescence — A form analysis of action expressed in narratives.Adolescence 9: 221–232.
Reitan, R. M., and Davison, L. A. (1974).Clinical Neuropsychology: Current Status and Applications, Winston, Washington, D. C.
Satz, P. (1972). Pathological left-handedness: An explanatory model.Cortex 8: 121–135.
Sellin, T., and Wolfgang, M. (1964).The Measurement of Delinquency, Wiley, New York.
Spellacy, F. (1977). Neuropsychological differences between violent and nonviolent adolescents.J. Clin. Psychol. 33: 966–969.
Tarter, R. E. (1972). Intellectual and adaptive functioning in epilepsy: A review of 50 years of research.Dis. Nerv. Syst. 33: 763–770.
Taylor, D. C. (1975). Factors influencing the occurrence of schizophrenia-like psychosis in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy.Psychol. Med. 5: 249–254.
Thomas, D. G., and Campos, J. J. (1978). The relationship of handedness to a “lateralized” task.Neuropsychologia 16: 511–515.
Thompson, A. L., and Marsh, J. F., Jr. (1976). Probability sampling of manual asymmetry.Neuropsychologia 14: 217–223.
Wagner, H., and Pease, K. (1978). On adding up scores of offence seriousness.Br. J. Criminol. 18: 175–178.
Walker, M. A. (1978). Measuring the seriousness of crimes.Br. J. Criminol. 18: 348–364.
Witelson, S. F. (1976). Sex and the single hemisphere: Specialization of the right hemisphere for spatial processing.Science 193: 425–427.
Witelson, S. F. (1977). Developmental dyslexia: Two right hemispheres and none left.Science 195: 309–311.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
Received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from University of California, Los Angeles. Major research interests are delinquency, violence, and coping under stress.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Andrew, J.M. Are left-handers less violent?. J Youth Adolescence 9, 1–9 (1980). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02088375
Received:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02088375