Revenge of the Right (brain).

February 7, 2005 10:20 AM

Which side of your brain is dominant? (take the test!) Why does it matter? According to Daniel Pink's latest article in Wired, we are moving from the Information Age (which favored the logic of the left brainers) to a new Conceptual Age (which favors the empathy and emotion of the right brainers). Don't get left behind!
posted by Quartermass (30 comments total)

You responded as a right brained person to 9 questions, and you responded as a left brained person to 9questions. According to the Hemispheric Dominance test, you use your left brain the most.

Which side of their brains told them that 9 is more than 9, do you suppose?
posted by jacquilynne at 10:35 AM on February 7, 2005

I thought we were moving from the Piscean age to the age of Aquarius, and so we needed to be more holistic and accepting and empathetic!

But I guess any label that's so big and loose and imprecise as to be meaningless will do, so sure, let's say we're going from the Information age to the Conceptual Age, so we need to be more holistic and accepting and empathetic!

Ah, the sweet smell of pseudo-science and vague generalizations!
posted by orthogonality at 10:38 AM on February 7, 2005

The side in my pants.
posted by HTuttle at 10:50 AM on February 7, 2005

0 right, 18 left. My right hemisphere is basically a parasite.

In other, slightly related and quite ancient news, President Bill Clinton proves that Self-Awareness comes from the right hemisphere of the brain! Well, sort of.

Heard this on the excellent but sporadic Radiolab on our local NPR station, WNYC Worth checking out, scout's honor.
posted by unsupervised at 10:51 AM on February 7, 2005

Unsupervised, does that mean you can't recognize yourself in a photo?
posted by pwedza at 11:11 AM on February 7, 2005

I got this too: "0 right, 18 left."

Knowing this couldn't have been the case, I went back and re-answered, mixing up my answers along the way with what I had previously given.

The results: "0 right, 18 left."

My left brain senses that this is bogus. My right brain knows it.
posted by diastematic at 11:11 AM on February 7, 2005

R-10, L-8. Maybe that's why those two voices keep yelling in my head?
posted by arse_hat at 11:18 AM on February 7, 2005

I can't go near a mirror for fear of getting in a fistfight.
posted by unsupervised at 11:19 AM on February 7, 2005

With no cheating - R 14 / L 4. Which means I should be sitting pretty at the dawn of the Conceptual Age, which is why I was so eager to post this today. This is exciting for us right-brained people.

After being (in many ways) devalued, misunderstood, frustrated trying to deal with people who are all left sided (as they were with me no doubt) - it is kind of a nice thought that I might have my place after all.

Oh - and orthogonality - I don't think this article was presuming any scientific guise. Simply an idea - and (I think - but again I might be biased) an interesting one at that.
posted by Quartermass at 11:27 AM on February 7, 2005

9 right and 9 left.
I also scored 750 verbal and 740 math on my SATs, way back when.
I suppose this is why I am always confused about how to respond to events in my life.
posted by bashos_frog at 11:50 AM on February 7, 2005

diastematic - I had the same problem - I answered all the questions correctly and it told me I had answered 18 as a left-brained person and 0 as a right-brainer. I knew this couldn't be right (ha) so I re-took it, with all the same answers, and got 13-5 in favor of right-brainedness. Much more like it.

You can self-score the test if you don't trust the computer, too - see the link at the top. :)
posted by salad spork at 11:53 AM on February 7, 2005

Here's another test if you want a second opinion.
posted by nalihasan at 12:07 PM on February 7, 2005

I thought the blue/red cross exercise that page links to was much more interesting.

And 6 left 12 right, for the record.
posted by Sparx at 12:16 PM on February 7, 2005

IMHO Pink's article feels better than it thinks (guess which hemisphere I use?) All those cheap foreign workers doing left-brained tasks have right hemispheres too, so why wouldn't US companies eventually outsource right-brained jobs as well? It's warm and fuzzy to think that high-paying creative jobs for designers, architects, etc will stay here, but I don't think that's realistic. As long as the work doesn't have to be physically done here, I think it's potentially on the long-term outsourcing list. And if ordinary middle-class consumers lose their left-brained jobs, who's going to buy the products and services of these highly-paid right-brainers?
Even if creative people invent whole new types of jobs/industries, as soon as it becomes cheaper to do the work elsewhere, it's a target for outsourcing. Favoring one hemisphere over the other won't solve the root causes of the problem, which are primarily the cost of labor and the exchange rate of the US dollar vs other currencies.
Pink is probably right that keen left-brain skills won't guarantee a good job in the US anymore, but his argument that creative right-brain skills will bring home the bacon isn't very convincing.
posted by Quietgal at 1:18 PM on February 7, 2005

Bah. I already know what I'm like. I want a test that unscientifically analyzes other people.

"I took a test that says I'm left-brained."
"Sorry, I checked you out and that's wrong."
posted by elderling at 1:29 PM on February 7, 2005

Has anybody noticed that the survey is broken?

Take the test again. This time, record your answers. Then check them against the key.

I'll refrain from ranting about the conceptual validity of the test until it actually works...
posted by lodurr at 1:32 PM on February 7, 2005

Apparently Safari is entirely left-brained.
posted by Armitage Shanks at 1:52 PM on February 7, 2005

... And Firefox just can't think at all.
posted by lodurr at 2:25 PM on February 7, 2005

My hemispheres talk to each other...So I both think and feel that this is silly.
posted by srboisvert at 4:51 PM on February 7, 2005

Perhaps one of my big frustrations as someone who reads real psychology on a regular basis is how popular magazines have taken a subtle but intriguing phenomenon then exaggerated and hyped it into "personality tests" that have little basis in the underlying phenomenon.

For example, researchers in hemispheric differences have long known that different sides of the brain light up for field independent vs. field dependent tasks. The classic example involved big characters constructed from small characters. However, recent research has found that a subtle tweak in relative scale produces the opposite effect than one would expect.

The end result is that it is likely that the differences between brain hempispheres is probably quite a bit more subtle than these personality tests.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 4:52 PM on February 7, 2005

Ha!
Ok, ok, the test was a bad choice (just trying to liven up the post!)

What about Pink's idea? (what I was hoping this discussion would focus on)
posted by Quartermass at 5:31 PM on February 7, 2005

I couldn't answer the questions: they were radio buttons instead of checkboxes, so I wasn't able to give the two right answers most of them demanded.

Right off the bat, "which side do you like to sit on" -- I thought back and remember sitting anywhere in the big ol' U lecture theatres. Left or right was fine with me; didn't like sitting in the middle. Pretty much the same applies for most of the other questions: I'll do either.
posted by five fresh fish at 5:46 PM on February 7, 2005

fff, somewhat surprisingly to me, that was one of the questions I was most sure about, once I thought about it. Definitely prefer sitting on the right side.
posted by rustcellar at 5:50 PM on February 7, 2005

I didn't finish the test for reasons similar to fff's.

When someone is talking to you, do you respond to the word meaning, or do you respond to the person's word pitch and feelings?

This is an either-or proposition for only a subset of the population.
posted by Gyan at 10:03 PM on February 7, 2005

I couldn't answer the questions: they were radio buttons instead of checkboxes, so I wasn't able to give the two right answers most of them demanded.

Me too, fff. Especially #14: Your desk or where you work is 1) neat and organized. 2) cluttered with stuff that you might need.

My desk is completely cluttered with stuff I might need, but cluttered in a very neat, organized manner. (Not that I get any work done; mostly I just read MeFi.)
posted by LeLiLo at 11:18 PM on February 7, 2005

You are left-handed, disorganized, impulsive, scatterbrained, emotional, and like to take risks.

You don't know the details of the novel you read but can intricately mime key scenes with the help of added makeup and backdrops painted with the blood and body fluids of pilfered zoo animals.

Rather than taking the shortest route to a restaurant, you walk in ever-widening counterclockwise spirals until it appears on your left.

You routinely find yourself outside on all fours in a strange place. A friend has tapped you on the shoulder and pointed to the foam which has formed in the corners of your mouth.

Test result: indeterminate. Don't email.
posted by gorgor_balabala at 2:22 AM on February 8, 2005

What about Pink's idea? (what I was hoping this discussion would focus on)

Good God, I wish, bc I'm completely right-brained, always have been. And smart, and decidedly not a millionaire. It seems like from the get-go we're set up for a left-brained world. Sit in an eighth grade classroom or walk through the cubeland of any corporate environment and tell me that's not true. Who makes the most money in the U.S.? Except for a very very few exceptions, the rich aren't artists, writers, or architects--they are oncologists, lawyers, suits ... left brained sorts, entirely, who couldn't draw a horse with four legs if their bankrolls and stock options depended on it.
posted by Lady Penelope at 8:05 AM on February 8, 2005

I don't think this article was presuming any scientific guise. Simply an idea - and (I think - but again I might be biased) an interesting one at that.

Then why call it "right brain" and "left brain?" If the article presumes no scientific guise, wouldn't "green aura" and "blue aura" work just as well? The only reason I can see that Pink uses "right brain" and "left brain" rather than "blue aura" and "green aura" is to fool people into thinking there's a scientific basis for what's being said, even if that's not stated outright.

I got 6 for my blue aura and 12 for my green aura.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 8:35 AM on February 8, 2005

five fresh fish Right off the bat, "which side do you like to sit on" -- I thought back and remember sitting anywhere in the big ol' U lecture theatres.

If you go all left brain about it the question is nonsensical. Right and left sides of the room are relative to which way you are facing. They should have either qualified it or asked starboard/port.

I was 13R-5L but a lot of the questions I had to really guess as either would do. I like to sit in the centre of a lecture room/theatre for example.

I think left brain stuff is a bit harder to export because a lot of it is cultural or site specific. Take even artcitechure, you can't build the same house in Florida and Alberta. Well you could but it wouldn't be a succesful house. Even something like weather forcasting is best done by people who live in the region being forcasted. Of course anyone who has ever had to use a horrible off shore pipe fitting vs a NA made unit knows that best and available aren't always the same thing.
posted by Mitheral at 11:32 AM on February 8, 2005

Are you bad at science?

Diagnosis: Right-brained.

Thanks for playing.
posted by gorgor_balabala at 11:57 AM on February 8, 2005