David Bowie, Kurt Cobain, Abraham Lincoln and Leonardo da Vinci would not have been any less talented if they had been born right-handed, according to new research from two Australian universities.

A new study goes against the conventional belief that left-handed people are more gifted than right-handed people.

A joint research project by Flinders University, Monash University and the University of California analysed data from the US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to test the theory that left-handed children are smarter, naughtier and more prone to illness and injury than right-handed children.

Physical health, mental health and cognitive development were measured across four key areas – vocabulary, mathematics, reading and comprehension.

The study revealed that left-handers scored considerably lower in all aspects except reading.

“In all areas with the exception of reading, a significant number of the left-handers were at the lower end of the IQ scale – it’s not that they all did badly but there was a sub-set of left-handers who had really low scores which brought the entire group down,” said Flinders Professor Mike Nicholls, from the university’s Brain and Cognition Laboratory.

“The American President and the Australian Prime Minister are both left-handers and there are many other high-performing left-handers in the world so there’s a myth that left-handers are naturally brilliant.

“If that was the case, however, we should have seen an over-representation of left-handers with very high cognitive ability scores – and we didn’t see this pattern,” he said.

“Some evidence suggests that left-handers are also more accident-prone but our results show that isn’t the case – if left-handers do experience injury it’s probably not due to clumsiness but rather the struggle of interacting in a right-handed world.”

The findings suggested that not only are they not disproportionately gifted, left-handers may actually need more of helping hand than others.

“Based on our findings it’s likely that left-handed children will need a bit of extra help with schooling to get them up to a higher level but it could also be a matter of making their work environment better so they’re not constantly bumping arms with the kid next to them or using right-handed scissors,” Professor Nicholls said.

“The most important thing is not to change a child’s left-handedness.”

As a leftie himself, Professor Nicholls says the findings are a little deflating.

“To be honest, when I started this research, I expected left-handers to do better and this would have fitted in much better with genetic theories of why left-handers exist in the first place,” he said

“Our past research has revealed very similar findings and left-handers can get upset with what we report. However, it’s not a matter of opinion; we’re simply reporting what is there.”

More information is available in the journal report, accessible here.