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  • Hey everybody, it's time for quick questions. As if I needed to announce it was time for

  • quick questions because obviously if you've started this video, it's time.

  • I got a number questions about hands and specifically, left hands and I wanted to answer them because

  • I'm left-handed. But apparently the reaction of a lot of people around the world to that

  • news is.

  • As Alexius Nemo asked, 'What's up with the bias in Western cultures against left handed

  • people?' In 2013 Smithsonian Magazine published an article with the headline 'Two-Thirds of

  • the World Still Hates Lefties'. Which made me a little nervous about my international

  • travel plans and made me wonder whether I should start training this guy. This is my

  • right-handed thumbs up. It's true though that mistrust of left-handers goes back in some

  • parts of the world thousands of years and exists even today in places like China, India

  • and some Islamic countries according to research. Now the simplest explanation for our discomfort

  • sometimes with left-handedness is the fact that it deviates from the norm. Ninety percent

  • of people are born right-handed, look I was about to raise my left-hand. That's just how

  • left-handed I am. Due to the rarity of left-handedness, some religions and cultures began to associate

  • left-handedness with being dirty or unclean or out-of-the-ordinary or even being associated

  • with the devil. In a number of Muslim countries in fact as well as parts of Africa and India

  • offering a left handshake would be considered offensive. Even in the United States, left-handedness

  • only recently became more okay. If you look back at medical journals from only say fifty

  • to eighty years ago, there were some neurologists and psychoanalysts who thought that children

  • should be taught right-handedness, even if it meant restraining their left-hands say

  • behind their backs and forcing them as children to write with their right hands. So to answer

  • Alexius Nemo's question, anti-lefty bias exists because well, we're weirdos. Eric Johnson

  • also had a question about left-handed ladies like myself. Hello. 'At least from what I've

  • seen why are more women left handed than men?' It turns out in fact that a meta-analysis

  • of 144 studies on handedness found that more men tend to be left-handed compared to women.

  • Why this is is a giant question mark. Scientists are still trying to figure out why this whole

  • handedness think exists to begin with. A lot of animals including doggies favor one paw

  • over the other, one side over the other. That kind of handedness as it were, is usually

  • split fifty-fifty so humans are really weird in the fact that we have this ninety-ten split

  • of right-handers to left-handers. Finally Sarah Metcalf had a question about handshakes

  • which definitely ties to handedness, particularly if you are in part of the world where you

  • should not shake with your left hand. 'In my experience more often than not it has proven

  • to be true that a person's first impression handshake reveals the quality of their character.

  • To my knowledge there haven't been any studies firmly, that's sort of a handshake pun, linking

  • the quality of one's handshake to their overall character because I think that would be an

  • impossible relationship to firmly establish. I just said firmly again. But there have been

  • studies on our perception of people's handshakes. Studies confirm that oh yeah we absolutely

  • judge people based on their handshakes because we even have that difference between a 'good

  • handshake' and a 'bad handshake'. Everyone pretty much agrees on what a good handshake

  • is. It's firm but not too firm, it's confident, it's not too long, usually it does not involve

  • a lot of palm sweat which sometimes is a little bit of a problem for yours truly. In the same

  • way that we read each other's body language in general, our handshakes also communicate

  • things like confidence and self-assurance or on the flip side of that, nervousness or

  • awkwardness or maybe even overcompensation for the people who really shake a little too

  • hard. Before I head out, I got a quick question for you: Leaving the toilet seat up, disgusting

  • or what's the big deal? If you got quick or long questions for me you can comment below,

  • message or tweet me @cristenconger and be sure to like and subscribe so you don't miss

  • a single thing that mom never told you. Should have said 'stuff', the name of your channel

  • Cristen is 'Stuff Mom Never Told You'. Not things mom never told you. Stuff. Stuff. Next

  • time.

Hey everybody, it's time for quick questions. As if I needed to announce it was time for

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