.Keys: It's really interesting indeed.
Looks like our brain is always looking for patterns in everything, even in our fingers while we play games.
Depending on what generation of games we are, we will most likely be accustomed to that generation pattern of controls.
Obviously this theory is just a theory and is also probably really subjective.
For example: FPS generation/players tend to play with WASD movement, Space jump, CTRL/C crouch, Shift run/walk, Mouse btn1 shoot, and so on.
And, because of this, they might look for this pattern in all other games, even if they're not shooters, be it FPS or TPS.
To me, I've created my own pattern that work with many genres and swap depending on action.
Well, If there is no mouse support (old games and racing games), I play games with my right hand used for direction keys.
I would also never play old joystick games with my left hand on the stick. And I still play Doom, Dark Forces and also Jedi Knight with keyboard, never got used to the rudimentary mouse controls. Ony from Quake on I use modern shooter controls.
Gamepads sadly are designed in a way that the left hand is used for controls. I am accustomed to it by now and modern third person games have very forgiving controls, but when playing 80s and 90s games with a gamepad, I have a really hard time. Amiga games with a gamepad? No way, it has to be a joystick.
However ... recently I tried Apidya with a Arcade gamepad (large easy moving stick on the left, buttons on the right), that worked quite well and I was even better than I was with a joystick. But with a standard gamepad? Call that game over.
I am also not good when it comes to two stick games, where the left one is used for movement and the right one for shooting direction. Maybe I would do better if I swap the input.