Pedophilia and hand preference: A meta-analysis.

Abstract

Pedophilic disorder has been linked to neurodevelopmental differences in diagnosed individuals. One common biomarker for atypical neurodevelopment are elevated levels of atypical handedness as individuals with several neurodevelopmental disorders show increased levels of left-, mixed-, or non-right-hand preference. A few primary studies have indicated that atypical handedness could also be more prevalent in pedophilia and child sexual offenders. However, individual studies are prone to sampling biases. A comprehensive synthesis of the literature on this topic is still missing. In this pre-registered study, we performed a meta-analysis on k = 14 studies that were searched in PubMed, Web of Science, and Google Scholar (until January 2025). These 14 studies measured hand preference in n = 1245 individuals with pedophilia and child sexual offenders and n = 5703 controls. We found evidence against higher rates of atypical handedness irrespective of handedness classification using random-effects frequentist and robust Bayesian meta-analyses. There was no evidence of heterogeneity nor small-study or publication bias across analyses. These results suggest that atypical handedness is not suited to serve as a biomarker for pedophilia.