An overwhelming majority of humans are right-handed. Numerous explanationsfor individual handedness have been proposed, but this population-levelhandedness remains puzzling. Here we use a minimal mathematical model toexplain this population-level hand preference as an evolved balance betweencooperative and competitive pressures in human evolutionary history. We useselection of elite athletes as a test-bed for our evolutionary model andaccount for the surprising distribution of handedness in many professionalsports. Our model predicts strong lateralization in social species with limitedcombative interaction, and elucidates the rarity of compelling evidence for"pawedness" in the animal world.
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