| dc.description.abstract | Systematic differences between handedness groups could have consequences for everyday life. It might determine preferences in life choices, such as choice of occupation or what recreational activities a person pursues. Empirical evidence suggests that there is a higher prevalence of left- or mixed-handed individuals in professions such as architects and artist. This has led to the assumption that left-handers might have an advantage due to the left-hand being controlled by the right-hemisphere, also dominant for cognitive processes relevant for artistic processing. Thus, the present study aims to investigate the prevalence of left-handedness among visual artists, sampled from the social media platform Instagram (N = 468). The study was operationalized as an observational study, using short video clips (reels) to determine their hand preference for artistic production. We expected to find a higher prevalence of left-handed artists in our sample, compared to the general population (10.6 %). Additionally, we proposed that the number of likes on an artists’ post could serve as an indicator of the quality of their artwork, where we assumed left-handed artists work to be of higher quality. Our results revealed a lower prevalence of left-handed individuals among Instagram artists (8.97%) than the predicted estimate for the general population. Further, we found likes to be significant in the opposite direction, but only a small effect size was found. Although, the study provides valuable insights into the prevalence of left-handedness among visual artists, using Instagram as a sampling method may limit its representativeness to the general population. However, based on the planned sample size and preregistration, our result suggests that the prevalence of left-handedness among visual artists on Instagram is unlikely to be higher than in the general population. | eng |