Abstract

The present study was conducted to find an appropriate classification system of handedness in Koreans. The 10-item Edinburgh Inventory was administered to 858 Korean college students and 502 American college students. According to three criteria(writing hand, self-classification, hand preference score), there were significantly lower percentages of left-handers among Koreans than Americans. Especially, the virtual absence of left-hand writers in the Korean sample suggests that, in Korea even more than in other conservative cultures, writing hand would be a poor indicator of overall handedness. Cluster analyses revealed three distinct subgroups of handedness for each sample: Right-handers, inconsistent left-handers, consistent left-handers. For Americans, the dissociation between writing hand and throwing hand was found in the inconsistent left-hander group as Peters & Servos(1989) found in their ILH group. The same dissociation, however, was not found in the Korean sample. For Koreans, the inconsistent left-handers used their right-hand for writing and eating, and left-hand for throwing and other skilled behaviors, while the consistent left- handers consistently used their left-hand not only for throwing and other skilled behaviors but also for eating and writing. The difference between the inconsistent and the consistent left-handers found in the Korean sample reflects the dextral pressure on handedness in Korea. If we call this inconsistent left-handers "compliant" left-handers whose preferred hand was partly modified by dextral pressure, we can call the consistent left-handers "stubborn" left-handers who did not or could not change, regardless of the strong social pressure. Discriminant analysis also showed that, for Koreans, "knife", "throw", and "scissors" were the best items for distinguishing the left-handers from the right-handers, whereas "write" , "draw" , and "spoon" were the best items for the Americans. This results provide another substantial evidence that the expression of handedness can be modified by social-cultural influences.