I have heard the theory (or maybe it is a fact, I don’t know) that the left brain is used for more logical processes, whereas the right brain is used for more creative processes. I also often hear of “left-brainers” and “right-brainers”, as if some people are more logical and others are more creative.
Now, I will buy that a wombat is not as creative as an impressionist painter. However, the idea that some people use their left brain vastly more than their right brain, or vice versa, seems absurd to me. For one, I believe that a lot of activities that are deemed either “creative” or “logical” (say, music and chess, respectively) are often much less extreme in their tendancies towards one type of thought or the other than people tend to make them out to me. For example, anyone who has read a book about music theory knows that it is a highly logical, mathematized process. Also, anyone who plays chess knows that whether one player’s king is “safe” or whether that player has “control of the center” is often a touchy feely subject, and one which you sometimes just have to use your best judgement on.
I could list many other activities that I believe are misstated as being entirely creative or entirely logical (sports, astronomy, killing people, cooking, both in combination, etc) but I think my two examples suffice.
Is there anyone else who feels that the tendancy among people to use one side of the brain much more than the other is highly exaggerated?
I don’t know about highly exaggerated, but I do think some people, especially bizspeakers, place too much emphasis on the differences. At times it seems that whether someone has a dominant left or right side of the brain is a segregational tool, when in truth, many people use both sides equally well.
The implication that someone with a dominant side is completely ruled by that side is an exaggeration though.
Being more creative vs. being more analytical certainly has some advantages and disadvantages in certain situations, but the ability to process which situation calls for which is the key… and that is what is overlooked in discussions about right vs. left, IMO.
This site offers this about a test subject who’d undergone split-brain surgery to protect against seizures and was shown different images:
I think it’s better to say it’s over simplified. As most complicated ideas get when they’re popularized.
Of course we don’t use one side of the brain vastly more than the other (for a start because most of the brain is taken up with keeping our bodies working…and we kind of need both side). And most “higher functions” do require both sides. But left brained and right brained are not entirely meaningless. There are some activities more centered in one than the other. This is pretty well established. For example language is mostly on the left side and people who have brain damage on that side are the ones likely to lose language skills. And then their’s the experiments with people who’ve had their brains severed, that soulmurk mentioned.
The two brains do seem to have, to some extent, different ways of thinking. (Although nothing is exclusive.) And some people do tend to one way more than the other.
In keeping with my not-entirely-relevant-but-not-quite-a-hijack theme, I’d be interested to see the results of other posters for this quick test.
I chose 16–8 left and 8 right–and seem to be one of those that uses both sides about equally. I’m curious how common or uncommon that is considering all the talk of dominant sides.
Not in my case, insofar as it’s possible to determine if you’re right or left-brained. I’m supposed to be right-brained, and I’m right-wing.
There’s supposed to be a simple “test” to determine if you’re left or right-brained: pick up your pen, and hold it to write something. Whichever way the tip of your pen points, is the brain you are. This makes most righties and most lefties both left-brained, because the act of lefties hooking their pens, which more than 1/2 of lefties do, gets the pen tip pointing left. Those of us who are left-handed and mirror write instead of hooking are right-brained, as are those weird righties like my coworker Jamie who hook their pens.
I’m not really sure I believe that people are right or left-brained. I am a creative person, but I’m also regarded as a pramatist and, as some people complain, “too damn logical.”
