In the quest to understand why it is we do the things we do, people have often turned to fads such as horoscopes. Among these cultural fictions, the concept of hemispheric dominance has taken hold, convincing people that the way they understand information, interact with others, make choices, and process emotions all depends on one thing: whether you are “Left-Brained” or “Right-Brained”.
Laterality is a separation of tasks based on what side of the brain you are looking at. However this doesn’t mean that the other side of the brain does not contribute at all. For example, the left side of the brain contributes largely to understanding language, while the right side of the brain can still understand basic language. There’s a lot of overlap of function and communication between the two hemispheres so it should not be assumed that one side solely controls a task.
The idea that personalities are determined by which side of the brain is stronger is an entertaining pseudoscientific fact which has been perpetuated by numerous artistic creations and info graphs such as the one below. According to this separation of personality types “Right-Brained” people are artistic, innovative and random while “Left-Brained” people are logical, rational and sequential thinkers. Everything from what career you choose to what music you like to listen to can supposedly be traced back to one hemisphere of the brain that is more powerful than the other, which is a pretty cool concept if you ask me.
A big draw of this is it tells us about who we are and why we do the things we do. Understanding who we are and what group we belong to is an unconscious driving force behind why we try to identify with so many labels. It’s comforting to know that we belong with “those people” or “that group”, and knowing where we fit in society helps us understand ourselves. Thats why knowing we are “left brained” and there are other people that act the way we do is so appealing. Take for example the depiction of left vs right brained people thanks to buzzfeed. (Buzzfeed Video)
There are quizzes you can take to tell you exactly which side of the brain you use more as well as how much of each side you use. Similar to the numerous buzzfeed, cosmo and distractify quizzes that are out there, hemispheric dominance quizzes provide insight to the way you think based on generalizations. The way the questions are designed force you to identify with one behavior or another without allowing for caveats. For example: “do you identify more with faces or names?” forces you to almost guess how you act on a consistent basis. What if sometimes you remember a face better and others names? It’s very polarized without any middle ground.
In our experiences with the quiz, we all found the questions very extreme. This caused us to have a very black and white portrayal of ourselves.
In order to function in society, we need both hemispheres. Even writing this blog post requires creativity (a supposedly ‘right brain’ characteristic) to come up with the content, while also requiring the linguistics (something contributed by the left brain) to actually write the post. There’s proof that both hemispheres are used when completing a ‘creative task’ such as painting.
Although these quizzes are fun to take, they imply that one hemisphere completely dominates over the other, everything we do. It’s a oversimplification of neuroscience and how the two halves interact with each other. Have fun taking this quiz, but take your results with a grain of salt.
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