Does Handedness Affect Accidents at Work?
A new study investigated whether handedness affects occupational accidents.
Posted May 2, 2026 | Reviewed by Margaret Foley
Around the world, most people are right-handed, with the remaining few being either left-handed or mixed-handed. This predominance of right-handedness has a strong effect on work environments. Most tools and most security measures (e.g., emergency buttons that need to be pressed to stop a machine) are designed for optimal use by right-handed workers. This has led psychologists to conduct research on the question of whether left-handed people are more likely to have accidents at work. However, the results of past studies have been quite inconsistent, making it clear that large studies with thousands of volunteers are needed to get robust insights.
A new study on handedness and occupational accidents
A new study, just published in the scientific Journal of Occupational Health, was focused on investigating whether handedness affected the incidence of work accidents in Japanese workers in a large cohort of volunteers ( Tomizawa and co-workers, 2026 ). In the study, the research team led by scientist Aki Tomizawa from the University of Occupational and Environmental Health in Kitakyushu, Japan, gathered data from more than 4,000 Japanese workers.
Each volunteer filled out the FLANDERS handedness questionnaire, a commonly used tool in psychological research to determine handedness. Volunteers reported whether and how often they had visited a medical facility for work-related injuries in the past year. The volunteers also had to indicate which work-related injuries they suffered from, such as injuries from being caught or pinched, burns, and electric shocks. Moreover, the scientists collected some personal information about the volunteers, such as their age and gender .
Results of the study: Mixed-handers have more accidents at work
Overall, the handedness of the workers who volunteered to participate in the study looked like this:
Thus, many more of the Japanese workers were right-handed than left-handed or mixed-handed, which is typical.
But were there any differences in the incidence of accidents at work between the three groups?
In right-handers, 5 percent of the workers reported accidents at work. The percentage was only slightly higher in left-handers (6.2 percent). However, mixed-handers had almost twice the probability of getting injured as right-handers (9.8 percent). Statistical tests confirmed this pattern. While there was no significant difference between left-handers and right-handers, mixed-handers showed a significantly higher rate of accidents at work than right-handers. These results remained stable even when the scientists used sophisticated statistical models to control for several other influencing factors on the results, such as the education of the workers, the industry they were working in, their working hours, their work style, and their sleeping time.
Taken together, the findings of the study show that left-handers are not more likely than right-handers to suffer accidents at work. Interestingly, mixed-handers had a distinctly higher chance of injuring themselves at work than right-handers. The scientists suggested two explanations for this finding. First, some studies showed that mixed-handers may have less manual dexterity compared to both left- and right-handers, which may make them more prone to work injuries. Second, mixed-handedness may in some cases be the result of forced retraining in a left-hander. The retraining may have resulted in them using work tools with their right hand, which is less dexterous than their dominant left hand. This may increase the injury risk at work. In comparison, left-handers typically use work tools with their dominant left hand, which has higher dexterity than both hands in mixed-handed people.
Tomizawa A, Nagata T, Odagami K, Mori T, Mori K. Association between handedness and occupational accidents: A prospective cohort study. J Occup Health. 2026 Apr 9:uiag019. doi: 10.1093/joccuh/uiag019. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 41966987.
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Sebastian Ocklenburg, Ph.D., is a professor for research methods in psychology at the Department of Psychology at MSH Medical School in Hamburg, Germany. His research focuses on left-handedness and brain asymmetries.
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