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An archer's eye and hand dominance profile says something about their mental make-up

2 studies

ForContextAgainst2022202420262022, context, n = 27592022, for, n = 262022, against, n = 26
Each circle is a study: its position gives the year, its row whether it is for, against or context, its size how many participants it measured. Light circles are studies on other populations or without archers.

Next to nothing, because almost nobody has measured it. A 2022 systematic review of fourteen studies covering 2,759 athletes from eleven sports, some of them in archery, finds no study that has linked the eye and hand dominance profile to psychological, cognitive or tactical traits, and already names the instruments for doing it. In the same year a small Turkish study offers the only hint: in twenty-six students after an eight-week beginners' archery course, all shooting right-handed bows, the seven with a dominant left eye make more marking errors on the d2 attention test (error rate 12.1 against 8.4 per cent), but their attention and concentration scores match those of the nineteen with a dominant right eye, 464.5 against 461.5 and 149.8 against 142.4. They are university students on their first course, not archers, and the d2 test has nothing to do with shooting: for the registry this is evidence from the general population. With seven people on one side and one measure out of three that moves, the hint points two ways and cannot carry a mental profile; in competitive archers the question has yet to be asked.

Also phrased as: "dominant eye and concentration"; "cross-dominance in archery"; "left eye with a right-handed bow"; "laterality and the archer's mind"

In practice

It is sometimes said that archers whose dominant eye is on the other side from the drawing hand find it harder to concentrate, or that cross-dominance and same-side dominance go with two different ways of being at aim.

Evidence

  • 2022
    Context Review Published later

    Systematic review of 14 studies covering 2,759 athletes from 11 sports: none of the 14 studies measures a link between the eye and hand dominance profile and psychological, cognitive or tactical traits, the archery studies included. The authors name SOQ, SCAT, CBAS, CSAI-2R and POMS as the instruments to use.

    Could hand-eye laterality profiles affect sport performance? A systematic review · Miquel Moreno, Lluis Capdevila, Josep-Maria Losilla

  • 2022
    For General population Published later

    26 beginner university students after an eight-week basic archery course (48 hours), all with right-handed bows: on the d2 test after the course the 7 with a dominant left eye make more marking errors than the 19 with a dominant right eye, 19.4 ± 28.7 against 13.8 ± 12.8, with an error rate of 12.1 ± 9.0 against 8.4 ± 5.5 per cent (p < 0.05).

    Temel Okçuluk Eğitiminin Dikkat ve Konsantrasyon Yetisine Etkisi · Üstün Türker

  • 2022
    Against General population Published later

    In the same study the main d2 scores do not separate the two groups: attention 464.5 ± 46.8 in the 7 with a dominant left eye against 461.5 ± 58.4 in the 19 with a dominant right eye, concentration 149.8 ± 66.9 against 142.4 ± 59.4. Compared with before the course, if anything, the relative gain is larger in those with a dominant left eye.

    Temel Okçuluk Eğitiminin Dikkat ve Konsantrasyon Yetisine Etkisi · Üstün Türker

Status history

  1. 2022 Transferred In the same year the map of the gap and the first hint arrive, though the hint does not come from archers. A systematic review of fourteen studies covering 2,759 athletes from eleven sports finds that none of those studies has measured a link between the eye and hand dominance profile and psychological, cognitive or tactical traits, not even in the archery studies. A small Turkish study, on twenty-six university students after an eight-week beginners' course with right-handed bows, finds more errors on the d2 attention test in the seven with a dominant left eye, but attention and concentration scores matching those of the nineteen with a dominant right eye. These are beginners measured with a test that has nothing to do with shooting, that is, the general population, and half the result points the other way: there is nothing on archers, and the status is transferred.

Related

Related articles

Research lines

Cite
APA

Campagna, M. (2026). An archer's eye and hand dominance profile says something about their mental make-up (Version 2). In Evidence Registry. Retrieved 16 October 2026, from https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/mind/eye-dominance-mental-traits

BibTeX
@misc{campagna2026_dominanzaocularetrattimentali,
  author = {Campagna, Matteo},
  title = {An archer's eye and hand dominance profile says something about their mental make-up},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {Evidence Registry, matteocampagna.com},
  url = {https://matteocampagna.com/en/registry/mind/eye-dominance-mental-traits},
  note = {Version 2; accessed 2026-10-16}
}

Other claims in this domain

See all claims on mind and attention