Ambidexterity and Magical Ideation

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Ambidexterity andmagical ideationKylie J. Barnett & Michael C. CorballisPublished online: 21 Sep 2010.

To cite this article: Kylie J. Barnett & Michael C. Corballis (2002)Ambidexterity and magical ideation, Laterality: Asymmetries of Body,Brain and Cognition, 7:1, 75-84, DOI: 10.1080/13576500143000131

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Ambidexterity and magical ideation

Kylie J. Barnett and Michael C. CorballisUniversity of Auckland, New Zealand

In a sample of 250 healthy undergraduate students, scores on a scale of magicalideation rose to a peak at the point of ambilaterality on a scale of hand preference,and fell away with increasing right- or left-handedness. This effect mirrors thatreported by Crow, Crow, Done, and Leask (1998) who found a dip in academicabilities at the point of ambilaterality, or what they call the point of hemisphericindecision. We relate these findings to genetic theories of laterality in which oneallele (RS+) codes for left-cerebral dominance while the other (RS7) leaveslaterality to chance. RS77 homozygotes may be susceptible to a lack ofdominance, resulting in a disposition to magical ideation and an increased risk ofschizophrenia, but also enhanced creativity and lateral thinking.

There is some evidence that those who lack consistent lateralisation may bemore than usually prone to what has been termed magical ideation, which Meehl(1964, p.54) defined as a belief, quasi-belief, or semi-serious entertainment ofthe possibility that events which, according to the causal concepts of this culture,cannot have a causal relation with each other might nonetheless do so. Eckbladand Chapman (1983, p.215), who have developed a Magical Ideation Scale,have extended the definition to include the belief in forms of causation that byconvention are invalid. Chapman and Chapman (1987) reported evidence thatthe proportion of people with mixed handedness (but not left-handedness) wassignificantly elevated among those with high scores on the Magical IdeationScale, which was combined with a Test of Perceptual Aberration, relative tonormal controls. Mixed handedness is also higher among those assessed ashaving schizotypal personality traits (Claridge, Clark, Davis, & Mason, 1998;Poreh, Levin, Teves, & States, 1997), and as well as among those actuallydiagnosed with schizophrenia (Crow, 1997; Shan-Ming et al., 1985; Shimizu etal., 1985). It has been proposed that schizophrenia encompasses a failure todevelop and maintain a normal pattern of asymmetric hemispheric activity (Gur,1999). Psychopathy, too, appears to be associated with reduced hemispheric

LATERALITY, 2002, 7 (1), 7584

Address correspondenc e to Kylie J. Barnett or Michael C. Corballis, Department of Psychology,University of Auckland, Private bag 92019, Auckland 1, New Zealand.

We thank Peter Brugger, ChrisMcManus, and JonathanWilliams for their constructive comments.

# 2002 Psychology Press Ltdhttp://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/pp/1357650X.html DOI:10.1080/13576500143000131

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asymmetry in motor dominance rather than with a more frequent right-hemisphere dominance per se (Mayer & Kosson, 2000, p. 237).

There is also evidence from visual-hemifield asymmetries. For example,subjects scoring high on a measure of belief in ESP did not exhibit the expectedright visual field/left hemisphere advantage in a lateralised decision-making task(Brugger et al., 1993a). Leonhard and Brugger (1998) found similarly thatpeople scoring high on the Magical Ideation Scale made significantly morecorrect word/nonword decisions than low scorers to letter strings in the leftvisual field/right hemisphere. They suggested that semantic activation in theright hemisphere is less focused than that in the left, giving rise to more indirectassociations and paranormal thoughts than activation in the left hemisphere.Consistent with this, visual noise is judged to contain subjectively moremeaningful patterns when presented to the right hemisphere, and is also judgedmore meaningful by people who believe in extrasensory perception (ESP)(Brugger et al., 1993b).

The present study was designed to examine more closely the relation betweenhandedness and magical thinking. The earlier study by Chapman and Chapman(1987) simply showed that there was a higher proportion of mixed-handers (butnot left-handers) among those with high scores on the Magical Ideation Scalethan among normal controls. Here, we show that magical ideation is related inan orderly fashion to variations in handedness.

METHOD

Subjects

The subjects were 250 undergraduate psychology students, 70 men and 180women, whose ages ranged from 18 to 59 years, with a mean of 23.8 years.None reported any history of mental illness, and all were healthy.

Questionnaires

All subjects completed two questionnaires, the Magical Ideation Scale and theEdinburgh Handedness Inventory.

The Magical Ideation Scale is a 30-item truefalse scale developed byEckblad and Chapman (1983). The scale assesses the presence of hallucination-like experiences and paranormal beliefs. The complete scale is shown in theAppendix.

The Edinburgh Handedness Inventory (Oldfield, 1971) contains 10 questionson which hand subjects prefer for a variety of manual activities, as well as twofurther questions as to the dominant foot (i.e., foot used to kick a ball) and thedominant eye (i.e., eye used to peep through a keyhole). Subjects were asked toplace a + in the left or right column depending on which hand they preferred foreach activity, or two +s if the preference was so strong they would never use the

76 BARNETT AND CORBALLIS

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other hand unless absolutely forced to. If indifferent, they were to place a + ineach box.

RESULTS

Scores on the Magical Ideation Scale, out of 30, ranged from 0 to 22, with amean of 8.36 (SD = 5.24).1 The mean score for women was 8.56, and that formen 7.86, but this difference was not significant, t(239) = .954, p = .341. Thecorrelation between magical ideation and age was7.113, indicating that as ageincreases magical ideation scores decrease, but the correlation did not reachsignificance (p = .080).

Laterality quotients (LQ) on the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory werecomputed by summing the number of +s in each column, and using the formula

LQ = 100 6 (R7L)/(R+L),

where R is the number in the right-hand column and L the number in the left-hand column. This yields scores ranging from 7100 for extreme left-handedness to +100 for extreme right-handedness.

The Pearson correlation between magical ideation and LQ was7.119, whichjust failed to reach significance (p = .06). However magical ideation didcorrelate significantly with the absolute value of the LQ, r = 7.213, p = .001,indicating that departure from zero LQ in either direction was associated withlower scores in magical ideation.

To explore this further, multiple regression was carried out with magicalideation as the dependent variable, and age, gender, LQ, and absolute LQ(absLQ) as predictors. The multiple correlation, R, was .259, which wassignificant, F (4, 236) = 4.24, p = .002. The only significant predictor wasabsLQ, t (236) = 72.90, p = .002. The regression coefficient was negative,indicating again that magical ideation decreases with absolute LQ. Theregression coefficient for LQ did not approach significance, t (236) = 70.99,p = .323. In this analysis, nine participants chose not to reveal their ages andwere not included in the analysis. An analysis of the full sample, excluding ageas a predictor, also resulted in a significant multiple correlation, R = 0.230, F (3,246) = 4.57, p = .004, in which the only significant predictor was again absLQ,t (246) = 73.02, p = .003.

To show the relation more clearly, the subjects were categorised into sixgroups according to their LQs. The LQs were first divided by 20 and rounded, so

1 These scores were positively skewed, with a coefficient of skewness of .448. In order to reduce theskewness, square-root transformations were applied after adding varying constants to the raw scores,and it was found that adding 3 to the scores then reduced the coefficient of skewness to 7.001.Analyses of the transformed scores yielded virtually identical results to those reported here, whichare based on the raw scores.

AMBIDEXTERITY AND MAGICAL IDEATION 77

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there were 11 groups, whose scores ranged from 0 (extreme left-handed) to 10(extreme right-handed), with a score of 5 representing no preference. Because oflow frequencies in the range 0 to 6, the scores 0 to 3 were grouped to form a left-handed group, 4 to 6 were grouped to form an ambilateral group, and theremaining scores represented different levels of right-handedness. Figure 1shows the mean score on the Magical Ideation Scale for each group. It is clearthat the score is highest for the ambilateral group, and declines systematically toeither side.

Analysis of variance with handedness group and gender as factors revealed asignificant overall effect of group, F (5, 238) = 2.70, p = .022. However, maineffect of gender, F (1, 238) = .355, p = .552, and the interaction betweenhandedness group and gender, F (5, 238) = 1.19, p = .316, were notsignificantand in fact both males and females showed the same trend, withmagical ideation peaking for the ambilateral group and decreasing mono-tonically with increasing handedness. A one-way analysis of variance with thefactor of gender removed showed the linear trend to be significant, F (1, 244) =5.0, p = .026. In order to test the significance of a trend representing absoluteLQ, a contrast was constructed to reflect handedness among the six groups

Figure 1 Scores on the Magical Ideation Scale as a function of hand preference. Error bars showstandard errors of the mean.


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defined earlier, on the assumption that handedness increases linearly from group2. The weight assigned to group 1 was the mean of that assigned to groups 36.This resulted in the contrast (5, 725, 713, 71, 11, 23). This contrast wassignificant, F (1, 244) = 8.34, p = .004, leaving an insignificant residual, F (4,244) = .44. It might be noted that the contrast reflects the symmetry of thefunction to either side of the point of equality.

DISCUSSION

The results confirm the evidence of Chapman and Chapman (1987) that magicalthinking is associated with the lack of consistent handedness, and shows furtherthat the relation is an orderly one; that is, the greater the degree of absolutehandedness, the lower the score on the Magical Ideation Scale. In other words,magical ideation can be regarded as a continuous variable rather than acategorical one, and is related monotonically to absolute handedness. Moreover,Chapman and Chapman combined the Magical Ideation Scale with a Test ofPerceptual Aberration, whereas the present results show the relation to hold withthe Magical Ideation Scale alone. The results also suggest that the effect isindependent of age and gender, although it may not be representative of thegeneral population because it is based on a sample of psychology under-graduates.

Our results provide an interesting contrast with those of a large-scale study byCrow et al. (1998) on the relation between relative hand skill and academicabilities, as assessed by measures of verbal ability, reading comprehension,mathematical ability, and spatial ability. The relation was the opposite of thatreported here, in that all four scores increased with absolute handedness. Scoresfor both boys and girls were therefore lowest at the point of equality between thehands, which Crow et al. refer to as the point of hemispheric indecision. Itseems, then, that magical ideation peaks precisely at the point in the handednessdistribution where academic abilities are lowest.

Neither our results nor those of Crow et al. are easily attributable todevelopmental instability, which is highest at the extremes of lateralisation, suchas extreme left- or right-handedness, rather than at the point of equality (e.g.,Yeo et al., 1997). Nevertheless there is one study suggesting that although therisk of schizophrenia is higher among mixed-handers, this seemed to berestricted to those described as having mild degrees of mixed-handedness,whereas those with more completely mixed-handedness did not differ fromright-handers, and also showed some evidence of superior intellectual function(Claridge et al., 1998). The authors of this study suggest that the mild mixed-handedness in some schizotypal people may be an indicant of exogenousneurodevelopmental disorder, whereas those with more completely mixedhandedness may be buffered against such disorders. The present results,however, provide no support for this.


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An alternative perspective on the complementary findings of the presentstudy and those of Crow et al. is provided by Annetts (1985, 1995) geneticmodel of handedness, which postulates a right shift (RS) gene that influencesthe distribution of handedness. Those who inherit two copies of the allele thatcodes for the right shift, which we may identify as the RS++ genotype, make upa distribution that is sharply biased in favour of right-handedness. We mayidentify heterozygotes, with one copy of the RS+ allele and one copy of aneutral RS7 allele, as RS+7, and in this group the distribution will also bebiased to the right, but to a lesser extent than in the case of the RS++ genotype.Those with two copies of the RS7 allele make up the RS77 genotype, and inthis group there is no genetic influence toward either left- or right-handedness,although cultural influences may create a small right shift. The evidence ofCrow et al. (1998) suggests that the RS+ allele should favour academic ability,not so much because it favours the left hemisphere in particular as because itshifts the distribution away from the point of equality. In the absence of anygenetically determined bias, RS77 individuals should be at greatest risk ofhemispheric indecision and consequent deficits in academic performance,although many individuals in this group will nevertheless be strongly lateraliseddue to chance influences.

Jaynes (1976) proposed that cerebral lateralisation may have arisen inresponse to natural disasters, leading to the emergence of self-consciousness andindividual responsibility for action, mediated by the left hemisphere. Prior tothis, the unlateralised bicameral mind was guided by hallucinations, ordisembodied voices, that instructed people what to do. Jaynes suggests that thecritical events leading to lateralisation and the emergence of self-consciousnessoccurred in the second millennium BC, which makes little sense in the light ofcurrent archaeological and anthropological evidence (Corballis & Lea, 1999).Even so, Jayness theory may capture something of the nature of hemisphericspecialisation, and of the association of magical thinking with lack oflateralisation. Gazzaniga (2000) has argued similarly that the left hemispherefunctions as a general interpreter, giving rise to the feeling that we are incharge of our actions (p. 1293). Again, this may be a consequence of cerebrallateralisation per se, and not of any particular quality associated with the lefthemisphere.

If the RS+ allele was indeed selected because lateralisation somehow enhancesexecutive function, one may wonder why the RS7 allele has persisted in thepopulation. The more or less stable presence of a left-handed minority implies abalanced polymorphism, and as Annett (1985, 1995) has pointed out this can beattributed to a heterozygotic advantage. That is, the RS+7 genotype is associatedwith slightly higher fitness than either the RS++ or R77 genotypes. This meansthat there must be some complementary advantage associated with the RS7allele that offsets that of the RS+ allele. Annett has proposed that the RS+ allelemay favour verbal capacities but heighten the risk of spatial deficits, whereas the


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RS7 allele may enhance spatial and motor skills but increase the risk of verbaldeficits. Although she and her colleagues have presented a number of findingsconsistent with this expectation (e.g., Annett, 1993, 1999; Annett & Kilshaw,1982; Annett & Manning, 1990), a number of other studies have producedevidence inconsistent with it (e.g., Cerone & McKeever, 1999; McManus,Shergill, & Bryden, 1993; Palmer & Corballis, 1996; Resch et al., 1997).

The present results, coupled with those of Crow et al. (1998), suggest analternative possibility. The RS+ allele increases the probability of hemisphericasymmetry and enhanced executive function, which may perhaps explain theenhancement of spatial as well as verbal and mathematical function ashandedness increases away from the point of equality. The RS7 allele isassociated with an increased risk of hemispheric indecision and magicalideation, and in some cases schizophrenia or psychopathy. From the point ofview of modern Western culture, it may seem odd that there should be anyadaptive advantage associated with magical ideation. Yet religions, whichincorporate many elements of magical ideation, remain a pervasive influence inall human societies. Magical ideation, while associated with irrationality andsuperstition, may nevertheless be part of a complex that includes creativity andthe ability to think laterally. That is, balanced polymorphism may be a balancenot so much between verbal capacities on the one hand and motor and spatialskills on the other, but rather between focused, executive-style thinking on theone hand and lateral, intuitive thinking on the other.

It has been proposed that a similar dichotomy might characterise the left andright hemispheres, respectively (e.g., Bogen, 1969; Ornstein, 1972). In thepresent proposal, the dichotomy is not between left and right hemispheres per se,but rather between the lateralised and unlateralised brainalthough in the greatmajority of people carrying at least one copy of the RS+ allele the lefthemisphere is dominant for executive function. It is sometimes proposed that theleft hemisphere is the more rational, but there is also evidence that the lefthemisphere, rather than the right, is the one that indulges in self-delusion,repression, and other Freudian defences (see Ramachandran & Blakeslee, 1998,for a summary). These activities can scarcely be described as rational, but theyare nevertheless primarily concerned with the self, and may perhaps be seen aspart of the executive system.

Finally, it is important to note that the correlation of magical ideation withabsolute handedness in our study was only 7.213. Although statisticallysignificant, this accounts for only about 4.5% of the variance. It is thereforelikely that cultural and educational factors also exert a considerable influence.But even tiny differences in fitness associated with different genotypes can havea decisive cumulative effect on gene selection (Corballis, 1997).

Manuscript received 7 November 2000Revised manuscript received 15 February 2001


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THE MAGICAL IDEATION SCALE(AFTER ECKBLAD & CHAPMAN, 1983)

Respondent s are asked to indicate whether each of the following statements is true or false:

1. Some people can make me aware of them by just thinking about me.2. I have had the momentary feeling that I might not be human.3. I have sometimes been fearful of stepping on sidewalk cracks.4. I think I could learn to read other peoples minds if I wanted to.5. Horoscopes are right too often for it to be a coincidence.6. Things often seem to be in a different place when I get home even though no one has been there.7. Numbers like 7 and 13 have special powers.8. I have occasionally had the silly feeling that a TV or radio broadcaster knew I was listening to

them.9. I have worried that people on other planets may be influencing what happens on earth.10. The government refuses to tell the truth about flying saucers.11. I have felt there were messages for me in the way things were arranged, like in a store window.12. *I have never doubted that my dreams are the product of my own mind.13. *Good luck charms dont work.14. I have noticed that sounds on my records are not there at other times.15. The hand motions that strangers make seem to influence me at times.16. *I almost never dream about things before they happen.17. I have had the momentary feeling that someones place has been taken by a look-alike.18. *It is not possible to harm others by thinking bad thoughts about them.19. I have sometimes sensed an evil presence around me, although I could not see it.20. I have sometimes had the feeling of gaining or losing some energy when certain people look at

me or touch me.21. I have sometimes had the passing thought that strangers are in love with me.22. *I have never had the feeling that certain thoughts of mine really belong to someone else.


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23. *When introduced to strangers, I rarely wonder whether I have known them before.24. If reincarnation were true it would explain some unusual experiences I have had.25. People often behave so strangely that one wonders if they are part of an experiment .26. At times I perform little rituals to ward off negative influences.27. I have felt that I might cause something to happen by simply thinking too much about it.28. I have wondered whether the spirits of the dead can influence the living.29. At times I have felt that a class lecture was meant just for me.30. I have sometimes felt that strangers were reading my mind.

* The questions marked with an asterisk score one point if the answer is false. All other questionsscore one point if the answer is true.


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Ambidexterity and Magical Ideation