Why are most humans right-handed?

The most interesting articles that came to our attention this week

Blocking of counter-partisan accounts drives political assortment on Twitter. Cameron Martel and colleagues examine partisan blocking on Twitter/X. In two field experiments in which users were randomly assigned to be followed by a Democrat or Republican account, they find that users are many times more likely to block accounts with the opposite views from their own, and that Democrat users block more often than Republicans.

Do progressive prosecutors increase crime? A quasi-experimental analysis of crime rates in the 100 largest counties, 2000–2020. Nick Petersen and colleagues examine whether progressive prosecutors increase crime rates. Analysing data for the 100 largest counties over a 21-year period, they find that the inauguration of progressive prosecutors is associated with higher property crime rates but has no effect on violent crime rates.

Steeper at the top: cognitive ability and earnings in Finland and Norway. Bernt Bratsberg and colleagues examine the functional form of the relationship between cognitive ability and earnings in Finland and Norway. They find that the relationship is actually stronger in the right-tail of the distribution of cognitive ability. Individuals with very high cognitive ability earn disproportionately more than those with merely high cognitive ability.

The relationship between cognitive ability and earnings is steeper in the tails of the distribution of cognitive ability.