Are right-brained people really more creative? Here’s what the science really tells us

Are you logical, detail-oriented or good with numbers? You must be “left-brained”.

Creative, artistic and intuitive? You must be “right-brained”.

Personality quizzes and career advice passed down through generations have many of us thinking we’re powered by one side of our brain that dominates our thinking style and explains our personality.

But is this the truth or fiction? And how did this idea come about?

To find out, we need to go back more than 150 years.

Back to the 19th century

The science behind this idea goes all the way back to the 1860s. That’s when French doctor Paul Broca found speech was controlled mainly by the left side of the brain. This was the first evidence the brain’s two halves may have separate roles.

A century later, Nobel laureate Roger Sperry extended this idea. He and his team studied people who’d had brain surgery to control their epilepsy. The surgery involved cutting the nerve fibres connecting the left and right sides of the brain, allowing them to examine each side individually. For the first time, they could see what each hemisphere controlled.

They found the left side was more specialised for controlling language and the right for emotional and non-verbal processing.

The separation of tasks into one side or the other, or lateralised behaviour, is not a uniquely human trait. Insects, fish, birds and other mammals do it too, not just primates.

Genes that govern this are expressed early in human development, before the brain is fully formed.

From an evolutionary perspective, scientists think having different halves of the brain specialising in certain tasks helped us do two things at once. That might be watching for predators while searching for food. So, lateralisation may be an evolutionary feature of nervous systems, rather than causing creativity or logic.

But the general public then interpreted “some functions are mainly controlled by one side of the brain” as “all people are either left-brained or right-brained” – a way to explain why we can think and feel differently to other people.

One thousand MRIs later

In 2013, researchers tested the left-brain versus right-brain theory. They looked at MRI scans of more than 1,000 people to map more than 7,000 brain regions.

The idea was to see if different parts of the brain were active at the same time, which would indicate they were involved in the same task.

They thought that if the control of personality traits was limited to one hemisphere, they would see consistent patterns of brain activity between brain regions on one side.

The researchers found some functions are concentrated in a particular side of the brain. These were around the areas and in the sides related to control of language and attention – similar to what had been flagged years previously.

What they didn’t find, however, was any evidence these networks differ between different people based on their personality or skills. There was nothing to suggest someone with stronger left-brain language skills had weaker attention skills on the right side of the brain, or vice versa.

So the researchers concluded their findings were not consistent with people being overall “left-brained” or “right-brained”.

How about creativity?

Other studies looked at whether right-brain activity is linked to creativity. But these found creative thought needs a widespread network of brain activity spanning both hemispheres, not a right-hemisphere specialty.

Like all good myths, though, there may be a little more to it.

A 2013 study found people whose brains more strongly control for tasks on one side compared to the other were better at the corresponding skill. For example, the more strongly someone’s language was controlled by the left side of their brain, the better their language performance.

In other words, individual differences in left or right brain functions are real and they do matter for performance, but they don’t apply so broadly as to dictate our personality or thinking style.

Why is this left-brain, right-brain myth so common?

The grain of truth is that the brain’s left and right sides do perform different functions. But the message has been simplified and distorted over the years to an over-arching label.

The other, more likely reason could be the Barnum effect – a phenomenon when we buy into personality traits and descriptions once we’re told they apply to us. This tends to be self-reinforcing. We notice and cultivate the traits that confirm it, and discount the ones that don’t.

In truth, both hemispheres are working, together, on almost everything you do – logic and creativity included.