People are left-brained or right-brained learners
| People are left-brained or right-brained learners | |
|---|---|
| FALSE | |
| "Each person is dominated by either the left side of the brain, making them logical and analytical, or the right side, making them creative and intuitive, and teaching should be adapted to their dominant hemisphere." | |
| Domain | Education & Learning |
| Tactic | Pseudoscience / Junk Science False Context |
| Era | Historical |
| First seen | 1970s |
| Origin | Popular psychology and self-help books of the 1970s and 1980s that extended Nobel Prize–winning research on split-brain patients far beyond its findings |
| Last reviewed | 2026-10-27 |
| Further reading: books on Education & Learning | |
The claim that people are left-brained or right-brained learners is one of the most widespread myths about the brain, popular in classrooms, personality quizzes and business training. It holds that individuals are dominated by one hemisphere, with "left-brained" people being logical and verbal and "right-brained" people creative and visual, and that education should cater to each type. The idea grew out of genuine research on patients whose brain hemispheres had been surgically separated, but it misrepresents that work. Large brain-imaging studies have found no evidence that individuals use one hemisphere more than the other overall. Both hemispheres work together in virtually all complex tasks.
The claim
Popular versions say that left-brained people excel at math, language and logic, while right-brained people excel at art, music and intuition. Educators have been encouraged to identify students' dominant side and teach accordingly, and books and courses promise to help people "unlock" their right brain to become more creative.
Origin
In the 1960s and 1970s neuroscientist Roger Sperry and his student Michael Gazzaniga studied "split-brain" patients, whose corpus callosum, the bundle of fibers connecting the hemispheres, had been cut to control severe epilepsy. Their experiments showed that the hemispheres have some specialized functions; in most people, for example, language production is concentrated in the left hemisphere. Sperry received a Nobel Prize in 1981. Popular writers seized on the findings, and books such as Betty Edwards's Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (1979) helped spread the idea of personality and learning types based on hemisphere dominance, going well beyond what the research showed.
What the evidence shows
- No dominant hemisphere. In a 2013 study published in PLOS ONE, researchers at the University of Utah led by Jared Nielsen analyzed brain scans of more than 1,000 people. They found that while particular functions are lateralized, individuals do not have an overall stronger left or right brain network.
- Cooperation. Tasks such as reading, mathematics and creativity involve networks spanning both hemispheres. Creativity, often associated with the right brain, draws on regions in both.
- Split-brain research was about special cases. The original studies concerned people whose hemispheres could not communicate, a condition very different from the normal brain.
- Teacher beliefs. A 2012 survey of teachers in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, led by Sanne Dekker, found that a large majority believed that differences in hemispheric dominance could help explain individual differences among learners, one of the most common neuromyths identified.
Why it persists
The left/right distinction offers a simple, appealing way to describe personality and talent, and it gives a scientific-sounding explanation for differences people observe. It is reinforced by quizzes, self-help books and training materials. Like learning styles, it can lead educators to pigeonhole students and limit what they are encouraged to try.
Lessons for readers
- Ask whether a popular psychology idea accurately reflects the research it cites.
- Specialization of some functions is not the same as dominance of one side.
- Be wary of labels that categorize people into neat types.
- Effective teaching draws on multiple approaches for all students.
- Real science is often more complex than its popular versions.
See also
- People learn better in their preferred learning style
- Humans use only 10 percent of their brains
- Brain Gym exercises improve learning
- Science Fictions (Ritchie)
Sources
- Jared A. Nielsen et al., "An Evaluation of the Left-Brain vs. Right-Brain Hypothesis with Resting State Functional Connectivity Magnetic Resonance Imaging," PLOS ONE 8, no. 8 (2013).
- Michael S. Gazzaniga, "Forty-five years of split-brain research and still going strong," Nature Reviews Neuroscience 6 (2005).
- Sanne Dekker et al., "Neuromyths in education: Prevalence and predictors of misconceptions among teachers," Frontiers in Psychology 3 (2012).
- Scott O. Lilienfeld et al., 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).