Tuesday, June 11, 2019

Left Brain or Right Brain: Helpful personality descriptor or dangerous false psychology?


by Brianna Parkes

The theory of people being right brained or left brained is not corroborated by studies, but this idea is as influential as it is dangerous.


Psychology, the study of behavior and the mind, has a huge impact on everything we do. An essential part of science is communication. Any science does little good for humanity if it is reserved for the academic elite. Extreme care must be taken, however, to ensure that the principles disseminating to the public are correct. The mind is a very complicated construct, and psychology is a field filled with nuances, where context is critical to knowing how to use information. In an effort to avoid the pitfalls that come with subpar information, it is crucial that the public is guarded against the pernicious presence of outdated information or overgeneralized outcomes. Phrenology is a historical example of this danger, and the modern ideas of being right and left brained is similarly dangerous.

A Warning from the Past:

An example of a phrenological text
While psychology might be catching the interest of more people now than ever before, this is not the first time that erroneous principles have been spread to the masses. In the early 1800’s a German neuroscientist named Franz Joseph Gall pioneered research in a field that came to be known as phrenology. Phrenology was based on the idea that personality traits, including complex notions like secretiveness and benevolence, could be determined by a set of measurements made on the skull. Gall’s work was popularized in the English speaking world by George Combe, a Scottish lawyer. It sold over 300,000 copies worldwide by 1855 and was one of the best selling books of the nineteenth century! Phrenology was so popular, people used to have phrenology parties, where they would get their heads measured together!

Gall’s work is not without merit. He built upon previous evidence and asserted that localization is important to neural function, certain regions of the brain do, indeed, correspond to certain functions. Another neuroscientist of the era, Jean Pierre Flourens, used the technique of experimental ablation in birds in an attempt to show that Gall’s straightforward and definitive answers did not fully explain how the brain worked.

But what was the harm of this idea? After all, it did eventually die out, and today there aren’t people who will measure your head and warn you about possible criminal tendencies, right? Phrenology, with it’s questionable foundations, was misused in many ways to enhance prejudices. Differences between the shapes of men and women’s heads was quickly pointed to as a justification for disenfranchisement for women. It could again be called into action when considering the differences between races; justifying a perceived Caucasian right to success and wealth, and the subsequent unjust subjugation of other races. 

Today, we find phrenology to be almost laughable, but we are repeating this pseudo-science in our day! There are still several faulty ideas about psychology that permeate popular culture.

A Common Misconception:

Take, for example, the idea that you are either left brained or right brained. A man named Roger Sperry came up with that idea in the 1980s. The theories of a Nobel Prize winning neuroscientist might well be taken as fact, right? Well, it’s true that Sperry was a smart man, and he did tons of research on the brain (specifically in split brain patients, where the nerves connecting the two hemispheres of the brain is missing or severed), but his theory of people being left brained or right brained was debunked in the 1990s. However, while the field of psychology has moved on from this idea, many people still believe that this simple dichotomy can explain important personality traits.

What is the idea of left brain vs right brain? Sperry suggested that the different hemispheres of the brain serve different functions. For example, the left hemisphere dealt with mathematics, logic, linear thinking, words, sequencing, and facts. The right hemisphere dealt with the imagination, creativity, arts, rhythm, intuition, and feelings. This led to people being put into categories of left brained or right brained. Oh, you like to paint and write music? That means you’re right brained. You’re more of a logical thinker? That means you’re left brained. There are still people today who identify as right or left brained, and quizzes online to determine what type of thinker you are abound.

Currently in psychology, the idea of being left vs right brained is seen as outdated and untrue. While, as previously mentioned, it is true that there is a localization of function of certain things in the brain, the brain is not truly such a dichotomous thing as we once believed it to be. It is largely due to the digital age in which we live that misinformation is spread. While it is of great advantage that we have access to so many experts' studies and advice via the internet, there are also a lot of amateurs who spread ideas that aren't true.  Anyone can say anything online. Someone with great rhetorical prowess can potentially have more of an impact than an expert in the field who only writes really dense papers. Unless we think critically and check our facts, any one of us can be tricked into believing false information.

What’s the big deal?

After my performance at a piano recital
(Age 8)
Why can’t we just keep believing we are left brained or right brained? If we are taught to put ourselves into a box of left brained vs right brained, we can miss out on other opportunities to learn. When I was growing up, I was very musical. I was taught piano from a young age, and I played the trumpet all through high school. I thought, because that’s more of a right brained attribute, that I wouldn’t be good at things I thought were left brained, like mathematics and thinking logically. I pigeon-holed myself into this place where I only did things that came naturally to me. Looking back, I can see that I may have missed out on other opportunities to grow and expand my mind. For example, I was involved in many extra curricular activities, but they were all music related. Not because music was the only thing I liked, but because I was too afraid to join other clubs like debate, because I thought I could never be good at it.

My (and my husband's) graduation
from Brigham Young University
 The idea of being left or right brained is dangerous because it leads us to believe things about ourselves that are not based on facts. We deprive ourselves of opportunities to grow and to do things that put us outside of our comfort zone when we just assume we can’t be good at something because that’s what the other hemisphere does. It pushes us into a fixed mindset when really going outside of your comfort zone can be one of the most fulfilling and beneficial things you can do. Now that I have remedied this false information about my brain, I have more of a growth mindset and I know that I can do things that don’t come easily to me (like graduating from college with a bachelor of science degree!)

Image credits: 
mercedes-benz-left-brain-right-brain-paint-small-71504 by AmandaD_TX is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
"a fancy head" by adamrice is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)