TENNET XI 125 Handedness and Depression in University Students: A Sex by Handedness Interaction Lorin J. Elias,*'? Deborah M. Saucier,? and Murray J. Guylee* *Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario; and ?Department of Psychology, Universi~ of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada Previous research has indicated that there is an increased incidence of left-handedness in samples of depressed individuals. We administered the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) to a sample of 54l undergraduate students. Left-handed males showed significant eleva- tion of BDI scores. It is unlikely that this result is due to decreased right hemisphere activ- ity or sex-role conflicts. However, one possibility is that known differences in male ster- oid hormones levels between right- and left-handers contributed to this effect. © 2001 Academic Press Evidence from clinical and normative populations clearly indicates that the per- ception of emotion (particularly negative emotion) is usually functionally lateralized to the fight hemisphere. Patients suffering right-hemispheric lesions demonstrate impairments in prosodic perception (Heilman, Scholes, & Watson, 1975) and identifying emotional facial expressions (DeKosky, Heilman, Bowers, & Valenstein, 1980). Neurologically normal populations exhibit fight hemisphere advantages for perception of prosody (Bulman-Fleming & Bryden, 1994) and emotional facial ex- pressions (Suberi & McKeever, 1977). Several lines of research suggest that right hemisphere dysfunction is present in patients with emotional disorders, such as depression. For example, depressed pa- tients exhibit deficits on visuospatial tests (Flor-Henry, 1976) and often fail to show the normal left ear (right hemisphere) advantage for dichotic-listening tasks em- ploying musical tones or click stimuli (Bruder, Sutton, Berger-Gross, Quitkin, & Davies, 1981; Johnson & Crockett, 1982). There is extensive literature documenting the association between left-handed- ness and various pathologies such as allergies and developmental language dis- orders (see Bishop, 1990, for a review). Despite this extensive literature, there is no clear consensus regarding the relation between atypical lateralization of function (such as left-handedness) and atypical emotional processing, such as that seen dur- ing major depression. Some investigators report an increased prevalence of left- handers among patients suffering from clinical depression or those with higher scores on measures of depression (Biederman, Lapey, Milberger, Faraone, Reed, & Seidman, 1994; Bruder, Quitkin, Stewart, Martin, Voglmaier, & Harrison, 1989; Herzog, 1989; Overby, 1994; Portellano Perez & Robles Sanchez, 1998). However, others have found no evidence for this effect (Clementz, Iacono, & Beiser, 1994; Shan ruing et al., 1985). Nonetheless, others find decreased prevalence of left- handedness in depressed samples (Abrams & Taylor, 1987; Merrin, 1984; Mos- covitch, Strauss, & Olds, 1981). The relation between handedness and anxiety ap- pears to be somewhat clearer. In college student samples, Hicks and Pellegrini (1978) and Davidson and Schaffer (1983) both found that mixed-handed and left-handed college students scored significantly higher on anxiety tests than did right-handed students. The present study sought to examine the relationship between handedness, sex, and depression in a subclinical, normal population. It was hypothesized that left- handers would score higher on a measure of depression than right-handers, with fe- male left-handers scoring highest on the measure.