Working as an engineer, I feel this explains many things about my work colleagues
Ask any neuroscientist what they think about the analytical left brain vs the creative right and you’ll probably end up with a lengthy lecture on why that whole concept is a myth. If logical thinking lights up those electrodes in the left brain hemisphere and visual creativity lights up the right, it doesn’t mean that your brain is more dominant on one side versus the other. The brain works as a network and such simple ‘if…then…’ type assumptions don’t necessarily correlate.
Even so, it’s good to have a bit of fun with the notion, so I couldn’t help myself and found this 5 minute online left brain vs right brain test and this shorter 30 second one. If you’re a wee bit curious as to what you are ‘labelled’, then take the short or long version.
I must admit, I thought I’d be more balanced, but my results were 78% right for the short and 67% right for the long test (showing you just how accurate the whole process is 🙂 ).
I believe I broke the tests…
For the 30-second one, I scored 72% left-brain. Not a huge surprise… I consider myself more analytical than creative, though I can be creative.
But… the longer test… I was 67 towards the right.
But that longer test was severely flawed. It had a lot of questions for which there couldn’t be a logical answer IF the question didn’t work for you.. like the one about “you decide to take Spanish, how would you do it”… I wouldn’t decide to take Spanish… I took it in high school because they conned us into thinking we needed a foreign language to get into college… I didn’t hate it… but it didn’t hold my interest enough. So me, on my own, I would not decide to learn Spanish or any other language suddenly… so I had to guess an answer to that question that wasn’t valid.
The one about whether parents and teachers would say you follow rules… Well… as a kid, I wasn’t well-behaved at home… always in trouble with my parents… but at school and when visiting others? I was typically more behaved than everyone else. Again, a question I had to guess an answer.
The receipt question… I don’t file them by date. I keep all my receipts together, and they generally end up in order because I add to the pile all year… so they aren’t a mess, but I’m not putting a lot of effort into organizing them.
I think this kind of explains why one test slanted me one way while the other slanted me the other… I had to be creative in order to answer the questions that didn’t directly apply to me… my post here should drive the nail home about my left-brain analytical side too! But being forced to be creative leads me to test as more creative because that’s kind of what I had to do to finish the test 🙂
I don’t know how these sorts of tests can really be validated for this reason…. as I break them irreparably by measuring creative for a test that I’m over-analyzing! 🙂
Of all the people Stuart, why doesn’t it surprise me that you broke it? 🙂
I also find it mildly amusing that your observations reflect what I would call a left brain approach to the anomaly – thorough analysis of each line item to find the gaps.
If I can be serious… as if I wasn’t already… 😉
I have always thought analysis is a form of creativity. People tend to seek order amongst chaos. We look for reason and explanations. This is analytical BUT it is also creative. You have to be creative to see the connections between things in the universe. It took creativity to even think of microscopic things or the existence of atoms.
So I’m not just being argumentative when I say I generally dismiss the left-brain vs right-brain stuff… because it puts some things as “opposites” that I think are really different sides of the same coin. Creativity is what allows you to skip steps and make conclusions about scientific observations… similarly, analysis is what allows you to later paint a picture of something you think of as beautiful. They really aren’t conflicting ways of thinking as much as they are complimentary.
Now… I need to go do something silly to balance the day! 🙂
Oh my, I’m 91% left-brained (took the short test). Not that I’m surprised, but I hoped to have a little more creativity than that. 😉
I did the short test and it came out 87% right brained. Odd, I’m definitely more logical/rational/ detail-oriented than that. LOVE this week’s cartoon 🙂
Ah, maybe you could write an article on the brain. I read the book, The brain that changes itself, by Norman Doidge. It’s a brilliant read. If I had my time again I’d be a researcher into how the brain works.
PS. 87%! you’re leading the way for right brainers here on the site
The long and short of it: 54/63. I have been trying to balance zzz brain by confusing it. Use left hand since I am a right hand. I recite alpha and numerals: 1a, 2b, 3c, 4b…. etc. Walk backwards, etc. Fun, Marti. Used to be a vulca aka Mr. Spok, never creative though.
But you, you have mastered it.
Ah Seeker, you flatter me and amaze me with your quirky habits all at the same time.
Hope you have found inner balance… if not, just walk around the room backwards whilst reciting your word thingy, starting left foot back 🙂
75% right brained, so glad I have some lefty in me!
Hi Bikky,I think the important thing is that you are happy with the result, so here’s to the 25% left in you!
PS. I hadn’t repeated the survey since the original post, so I thought I’d take the short one again, for fun. Talk about back flip – I’ve shifted to 56% left and 44% right!