Left brain, right brain?
I am sure that many of you know the famous story by Robert Louis Stephenson, ‘The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde.’ This story represents the duality of human nature with the logical left brain of Dr Jekyll and the emotional right brain of Mr Hyde. Those of us that are right brained are intuitive, creative thinkers and exhibit general artistry. While those who are left brained are orderly, structured, mathematically minded and rational. There are online tests which claim to be able to tell your dominant hemisphere. These tests tell you things like right brained people write fiction, are spontaneous and holistic. Left brainers are logical, linear and analytical. There were books saying that societies are based on the left brain logic and should be more about right brained emotion. For readers of a certain age, Captain Kirk in Star Trek was a right brained, emotional leader and his number two, Mr Spock was a cold, left brained logician.
So what is the truth? I am sure that you will not be surprised to hear that there is no evidence of this. However, like many myths there is a kernel of truth. For example, it is true that the left side of the brain controls the physical movements of the right side of the body and vice versa. It is also true that language ability resides mainly, but not exclusively, in the left side of the brain and that attention lies mainly, but not exclusively, on the right side, but these facts don’t relate to personality traits. There was a large scale study done in 2013 which found no evidence for people having a dominant hemisphere. It did show that for some activities there was a bias to one side of the brain, but importantly, this did not vary by person. All of the participants, be they engineers or artists used their entire brains.
Why is it important? Well, like many neuromyths, it still holds sway. In a sample of 242 teachers, 90% agreed with the statement ‘that difference in left brain / right brain preference can help explain individual differences among learners.’ There are associated problems here as a teacher and a student may assume that a student is not good at mathematics because they are right brained. If students internalise this it could impact their self-efficacy, their confidence in their ability to perform a certain task. This leads to underperformance, a self-fulfilling prophecy. The converse could be true of a left brained person thinking that they can not be creative. These distinctions may limit a student’s potential. For sure, some people are more creative or logical but it doesn’t mean that one side is more dominant than the other. Many logical tasks require creativity and much creative work is rooted in logic. Embrace what you are good at and let all parts of your brain do the work!
