Whether you’re left, right or ambidextrous, “handedness” is part of our identity. But a lot of people don’t realise that we have other biases too and they are not unique to humans. My colleagues and I have published a new study that shows aligning our biases in the same way as other people may have social benefits.

Across different cultures, human populations have high levels of right-handedness (around 90%). We also have a strong population bias in how we recognise faces and their emotions.

A significant majority of the population are faster and more accurate at recognising identities and emotions when they fall within the left visual field compared with the right visual field.

These types of biases develop in our brains in early childhood. The left and right hemispheres of the brain control motor action on the opposite sides of the body. If your left visual field is dominant, that means the right side of your brain is taking dominance for recognising faces and emotions.

Until recently, scientists thought behavioural biases were unique to humans. But animal research over the last several decades shows there are behavioural biases across all branches of the vertebrate tree of life.

For example, chicks that peck for food with an eye bias are better at telling grain from pebbles. Also, chicks with an eye bias for monitoring predators are less likely to be eaten than unlateralised chicks. Studies show that animals with biases tend to perform better at survival-related tasks in laboratory........

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