Do you consider yourself a left-brained or right-brained person? It’s one of those questions that pops up in personality quizzes, team-building workshops, and casual chats about how we think.
The idea has been around for decades: people who are “left-brained” are said to be logical, analytical, and good with numbers, while “right-brained” people are meant to be creative, emotional, and intuitive.
It’s a neat way to make sense of our differences – but it’s also…not true.
Like many pop-psychology beliefs, this one started with a grain of truth. Scientists have known for a long time that some areas of the brain are more involved in certain tasks. Language tends to be processed more on the left side, for instance, while things like recognising faces or reading emotions can lean more on the right. So, different parts of the brain do handle different jobs.
But the idea that people themselves are dominated by one side of the brain or the other is misleading. When we think, feel, imagine, plan, create, or solve problems, both sides of the brain are active. They don’t work in isolation – they work together, constantly passing information back and forth.
In fact, one large study looked at the brain activity of over a thousand people, and found no real evidence that anyone had a “stronger” side. People might prefer certain tasks – some might love spreadsheets while others would rather paint – but that doesn’t mean one half of their brain is running the show.
That doesn’t mean the labels are completely useless. They can still be helpful to understand whether we lean more towards structured or spontaneous ways of thinking. But being “left-brained” or “right-brained” is a figure of speech we might use to describe our preferences rather than an accurate description of how the brain works.
So, if you’ve always believed you’re “not a maths person” because you’re right-brained, or “not creative” because you’re left-brained, it might be time to rethink that. Our brains are far more flexible than the myth suggests.
We can learn new skills, think in new ways, and develop parts of ourselves that we’ve long ignored – no matter what side of the brain we think we’re using. Albert Einstein was well-known for making good use of a habit he called “combinatory play”, where he enjoyed playing the violin as a means to help him think about and solve complex mathematical problems.
The left-brain/right-brain idea is just that: an idea – a catchy phrase that managed to stick around. But the science tells a different story – one that’s a lot more interesting, and (like most tasks) requires both hemispheres of our brain to understand what’s going on.
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