Right Brain/Left Brain

Creative or Logical? Knowing which of these dominates your personal thinking and processing style could go a long way to self understanding and development. For those who have dominant right or left brain attributes, recognizing these can help us to understand the personal strengths and weaknesses of our individual processing characteristics. There are a number of characteristics which define left or right braininess. Left brain thinkers use verbal, linear, sequential, logical, symbolic and reality based thinking methods. Right brained dominators are considered more creative than logical. Their characteristics are represented by intuition, fantasy, nonverbal messages, concrete, random and holistic attributes.

If you consider how you respond, think and process you may find you can easily identify with one set of attributes or the other. Others of us think almost equally logically and creatively. There are plenty of online tests you can take for fun to work out which is you.

Specifics of Left Braininess

Verbal Processing; used by the left hemisphere to process thoughts and ideas with words. A verbal processor will use specific and exact data to relay information in a sequential pattern.

Linear processing; in this process, the left brain takes chunks of data and lines them up in order to find conclusions.  The information is processed from parts to a whole in a logical progression.

Sequential Processing; these are the list makers. Sequential processors interpret and introduce symbols to understand meaning. Organized people are almost always sequential processors.

Logical Processing; this is the method used to take pieces of information to derive logical answers. It is thinking by deduction. Logical thinkers are usually good with math and science.

Symbolic Processing; pictures and symbols are used to store, process and interpret information.

Reality-based Processing; is the processing of information with a grounding in what is real. Rules and regulations are followed and environmental changes are accepted without difficulty.

Specifics of Right Braininess

Intuitive Processing; this is the holy grail of the creative thinker. Knowing answers and instinctively understanding situations the intuitive processer gets things right without fully understanding why. These thinkers may be able to work backwards through a problem to figure out how they got there.

Fantasy-oriented Processing; is used by the right hemisphere as a method for processing information with creativity. This processing does not follow a set of rules but rather determines a course based upon feeling. Fantasy oriented processors do not adapt well to change and will often attempt to stop or adapt the change.  Emotion is integral to this creative thinking.

Nonverbal Processing; this technique is used to process through illustration. This person will not read or hear information and then process; he or she must create a mental image before the information can be understood.

Concrete Processing; this is the tactile person who will see or touch an item to process the information. Visualization is also an integral component of concrete processing.

Random Processing; as with computer RAM there is no prioritization with random processing. All data entering the mind is of equal importance and so the random processing brain will find it extremely difficult to deal with sequential data but relatively easy to attend to many different tasks at once.

Holistic Processing; is used by the right brain to provide a holistic picture from which to draw conclusions. The big picture is then broken down to chunks of data. Strong visual and spatial skills are indicative of holistic processing.

While much of this might seem frivolous it helps, especially when working on group or team projects, to understand where you might personally contribute a particular thinking characteristic and where you might seek help.