Results of the Open Hemispheric Brain Dominance Scale

Left brain preference			Right brain preference
	-2	0	2

Differences between left and right brain

Functions of the left brain	Functions of the right brain
Language Logic Critical thinking Numbers Reasoning	Recognizing faces Expressing emotions Music Reading emotions Visualizing images Intuition Creativity

Problems with the theory

On a biological level the left-brain/right-brain distinction is entirely bogus. It is true that certain areas of the brain have different functions and that these areas are located in either the right or left hemisphere, but their location has no significance for cognition (Nielsen, 2003). An analogy can be drawn to the rest of the human body. For example, the heart is in the left side of the chest and the liver is on the right side, but this does not mean that someone who does lots of cardio exercise (making the heart work a lot) is a "left bodied" person while a person who drinks lots of alcohol (making the liver work a lot) is a "right bodied" person.

Even ignoring the supposed biological underpinnings, the continuum of individual differences described by the theory is not a very good one. There is low agreement between different people who promote the distinction as to what the distinction actually is. The correlation between different scales that are claimed by their developers to measure left-brain and right-brain thinking may in some cases be as low as 0 (Genovese, 2005).

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References

Genovese, Jeremy EC. "Hemispheric cognitive style: A comparison of three instruments." The Journal of genetic psychology 166.4 (2005): 467-481. dx.doi.org/10.3200/GNTP.166.4.467-482

Nielsen, Jared A., et al. "An evaluation of the left-brain vs. right-brain hypothesis with resting state functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging." PloS one 8.8 (2013): e71275. dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0071275