Right handed people switch their fork hand cause tables are always set for formal occasions with the fork on the left side of the plate. And since formal occasion has turned into basically every time you have someone over for a meal then it turns into a habit due to constant repetition.
That doesn't explain why they switch at all? I mean, why don't they always use the fork in their right? I think that may be philosophical, psychological AND antrophological...
It indeed does explain, just pay attention to whenever you go to visit friends and relatives for a meal. Also note anywhere you go to eat (not a fast food joint) you will see people eat with their fork in the left hand. Its simply something ingrained through generations all across the globe as something you "just do". But yes to a point it is psychological, as you simply have it engrained by repetition (seeing someone else doing it as a child, children imprint on so many things from their elder peers) or simply through learning (parents teach their kids to actually use the utensils in this manner cause again, they know its the right way to go about doing it since they have been taught or imprinted on it beforehand).
Yaaay! Thank you! Seeing developers give thought to such issues always warms my heart. --------------------------------- And I'm all kind of funky, because I don't switch the fork, I switch the knife. I hold the fork (or the spoon) in the right hand, which I'm pretty sure is a habit that was formed because using knife for cutting meals with left hand is easier. But if I have to use to spread something (ie. butter on a loaf), I can only do that with right hand. Left hand is my strong and precise hand, and is physically little bigger. Yet its fingers are, er, tied closer - I can't do "live long and prospers", metal horns or form a fist with uncurled ring finger without feeling pain and having to hold the fingers in place with the right hand.
It made sense historically, when knives were less...ehm...dexterous implements of cutlery and more akin to small-scale weaponry. In such times, it made perfect sense to hold the dangerous implement in your skilled hand and a spoon in your left one. The evolution of the tined fork is relatively recent, compared to the full length of human history. These days, with the fork reigning supreme, it's absolutely insane for a right-handed person to hold a fork in their left hand, but we have the collected weight of the habits of hundreds of years of dead people (aka tradition) to thank for it being ingrained in society as "the thing you do" when eating in company. But if its just me, on my own, and I have no need to use a knife...that baby's going straight across to the right hand, no questions asked. We're funny creatures, us humans.
Because the right hand is better suited for cutting, as all you need of the fork hand is to hold the meat still, Actually know, I use my right hand for my fork, and left hand the knife. Then again, my family has formal dinners like once a year tops.
