February 21, 2016

Right brain/left brain.

I'd seen that a lot of people were taking this test and I finally gave in and took it. It was much more interesting than I thought it would be, and I think it turns out that I'm the kind of person who'd take a test like this based on whether I'd thought I'd find it intrinsically rewarding, which it was.

49 comments:

Jake said...

Have always thought I was right brained. Says I'm 70/30 left brained.

Meade said...

70/30. Then I retook the test, trying to answer as I would've 40 years ago before I was married for 25 years, started and worked at a business for 30 years, became a father, saved and invested for retirement for 35 years, lived through 9/11.
And I got: 36/64.

Ann Althouse said...

I came out left 43%, right 57%.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

60/40 left-brained. I've always thought they were pretty well even, but ...

Jon Ericson said...

Fiddy-Fiddy
Balanced, oddly.

whitney said...

66/34 left. But I always tested exactly the same for math and language on standardized test, SAT, GRE etc. Not that I take many (any) anymore

Balfegor said...

Left 63:37. I would have guessed something like 60:40, so about consistent with what I would have thought.

Fernandinande said...

The parlor game said: L/R = 46%/54%, which is incorrect.

Rosalyn C. said...

I got 50/50. Neutrality personified.

Dale B said...

53/47 which is a bit surprising as I am an engineer. Only a bit surprising though as I know that I often don't approach things at work the way that the people that work for me do. This seems to annoy all of us.

I had problems with several of the test questions. On some I thought both answers were good. On some I thought neither answer fit. In both cases I just guessed.

I think that I remember hearing several places that the left brain right brain thing is nonsense. I'm pretty sure that there was a several part series on the brain a month or two ago PBS that said this.

traditionalguy said...

50/50 I told you I am fair and balanced.

Kate said...

60/40 Left. I'm bothered that "rational" is defined by math. Grammar is rational, too. This STEM-ism must be stopped!

Michael K said...

Left brain. I did not notice a %.

Interestingly, I was told by my mother that I was left handed as a small child but my father forced me to use my right hand as he did not want a left handed child.

I may actually right brained as far as dominant hemisphere but don;t know.

Laslo Spatula said...

I am Front-Brained so all of this is meaningless to me, you laterals.

I am Laslo.

Fernandinande said...

Dale B said...
I had problems with several of the test questions.


Also. I took it again and answered differently on the "toss a coin" questions and got 54/46. The "cover an eye" question was bogus for me because I consciously covered the eye that "don't work so hot" up close. "Draw a C on your head" was influenced by my thinking recently about how mirrors don't actually reverse anything (your right hand is still on the right, etc)...so I drew the C so that someone facing me could read it properly. FWIW, math and physics degrees, hate poetry, nominal interest in "art", love music but a pretty crummy musician.

Their "IQ Triangle Test (2016 Version)" has problems, too, I think.
I got logic=170, visual=160, number=144 => 158 overall. Beside the fact that regular IQ tests aren't accurate over about 140, 20 questions aren't enough to give that granularity in that range, unless it was designed for some high range only, in which case the floor would be too high for most people to get anything right. And they say "Most people score in the range 90-100 in general; 130 in visual; 80 in numerical; and 90 logical." If that statement refers to this test, it means it's not properly normalized.

Fernandinande said...

"Who were you in your last life?" So they admit to being bogus: "In your last life, you were ...ET"

Biff said...

50/50. Cruel neutrality?

Bruce Hayden said...

70/30 left brained. But, that makes some sense having spent my career(s) in software development and patent law.

Ken B said...

100/100

You puny humans.

LYNNDH said...

Yeah, but sometimes it was really hard to decide which one to choose. I am 70/30 Left brain, which fits. I am also a Libra, which means I balance things, thus the hard decision making on some of the questions.

dbp said...

46/54 which is odd, I thought it would be more like 70/30.

Christy said...

56/44 left brained. I'm remembering testing more left brained 10/15 years ago, back when I spent much of my life analyzing data and less time reading cozies.

Karen of Texas said...

Did anyone else realize when taking it that they could skew the result to be left or right based on understanding that a particular answer would lend itself to being a right-brain answer verses a left-brain answer? I couldn't finish it. I realized I wanted to be 'identified' a certain way. I couldn't be subjective when responding. I was trying to 'force' a particular outcome.

Karen of Texas said...

*Objective. Sheesh.

madAsHell said...

I was distracted by the your-answers-will-appear-in-seconds timer. I don't understand what that added to some of the questions. I could not take my eyes off the timer, and it always expired before I could read the question.

I was 66/34 right brained.

pm317 said...

@Ann Althouse I came out left 43%, right 57%.
---------------------------------

wow.. I am that too, and I have often felt you and I are clones.

I thought I would be more left brained than that. My hubs came up left 53%, right 47%. But this is so close to the middle that it is more like we use both sides fairly equally. To Dale's point above, I too had to guess for a few of the questions, because I thought they both applied or neither fit.

J. Farmer said...

Left/right brain dichotomies were a big fad in pop psychology many years ago, and it's probably just a pseudo-scientific myth, like the resilient fallacy that we only use some small, limited percentage of our brain.

Freeman Hunt said...

60/40, which is what I would have guessed for a test like this. The results are nonsense, but I agree, the test itself is entertaining and worth taking for that reason.

Big Mike said...

Left brain 70% - 30%. Much as I enjoy classical music and impressionist art, I was surprised it was that low.

Charles said...

53 / 47, left to right. I thought many of the answers were inappropriate responses fwiw.

As to the IQ tests, they have to be wrong. I scored 180 on the 2015 test and 193 on the 2016 test. These numbers do not correlate to other, standardize tests I've taken.

Their scale makes no sense...

eddie willers said...

I learned that what I used to think was Right Brain is actually Left Brain.

I was 73-27.

Coconuss Network said...

73-27. Our schooling from yesteryears was more Left Brain training. Right Brain fun came into Education much later I think. And now with so much emphasis on standardized tests, right brain is better saved for after graduation. Unless you're a sketcher at art school and you're studying the design and technique of Alfred Kubin or Oskar Laske.

tim maguire said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
tim maguire said...

56/44, left brain, though there were a lot of questions where I wanted to answer both, neither, or it depends.

sinz52 said...

43 left, 57 right.

Though the question about which eye you decided to close is probably incorrect for me. Given a choice, I always close my left eye--NOT because of left/right brain but because my vision in my left eye is considerably worse than in my right eye.

Bill Peschel said...

I'm stumped by the first question:

Which subjects do you prefer?

Math or similar academic classes

Music or similar art classes

I don't have a preference. I took a singing class, in part because I can't sing well. We spent the semester working on exercises and technique, then performed one song (mine was "Dust in the Wind"). I was adequate, but it showed me how much effort it took to sing well.

I've also taken political science, history, and physics courses that were equally fascinating. I bombed out of physics halfway (I was taking 20 hours and working at a newspaper; an insane schedule), but I still use force vectors and understand why hitting a wall at 20 mph gives you the force of 40 mph.

I'll push through, but I'm not happy with the first question.

Bill Peschel said...

Tried to do a couple more. The direction question didn't have the option I would use ("take the first right, the building would be on the left"). And now:

When you watch a movie, you pay more attention to:

The storyline.

The acting.

I do both, whichever is more interesting at that moment. For example, with "Armageddon" last night, I was a) talking to my wife about tropes and predicting where the movie would go next; b) admiring Bruce Willis' attempt to not act like BW; c) wondering about the mythical appeal of Liv Tyler; and d) grooving on the future Batman.

I think I'm too brilliant for this test.

MountainMan said...

I am 73/27, which didn't surprise me, given my 40+ year career in engineering and IT.

Bill Peschel said...

Finally worked through it. More bogus questions. Result: 56/44 and a waste of time.

(Another example of a terrible question was "which would you prefer to accomplish, solving a galactic mystery or writing a novel about a superhero saving humanity from doom." I'm a writer; I chose A, because I would never want to write a frershlugger novel about a superhero (even though I loved "Soon I Will Be Invincible").)

JCC said...

Like standardized psychological testing, this thing might have some (small) validity if one reacts quickly to the query rather than thinking about it overly much. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory used to be a regular part of our promotional process, and was a timed exercise in silly-ass questions so one was rushed to answer, forcing you to avoid trying to game the questions.

Left-brain. Can you tell?

DB said...

http://healthcare.utah.edu/publicaffairs/news/current/08-14-2013_brain_personality_traits.php

Perhaps there's no such thing.

sparrow said...

"Left right balanced" So neither here nor there

sparrow said...

I was 50/50 btw

Robert Cook said...

My results: 40% left brain; 60% right brain.

Robert Cook said...

"As to the IQ tests, they have to be wrong. I scored 180 on the 2015 test and 193 on the 2016 test. These numbers do not correlate to other, standardize tests I've taken."

Are you a genius? With such scores, you would be categorized as having a "genius I.Q."

Robert Cook said...

"(Another example of a terrible question was "which would you prefer to accomplish, solving a galactic mystery or writing a novel about a superhero saving humanity from doom." I'm a writer; I chose A, because I would never want to write a frershlugger novel about a superhero (even though I loved "Soon I Will Be Invincible").)"

You're missing the point of the question. It is asking: Would you rather solve a scientific problem (left brain) or would you rather engage in the creation of a work of the imagination (right brain)?

Howard said...

Robert: I had the exact same response as Bill. What you apparently don't understand is that this superficial bullshit test is so myopic that it assumes art and science are proxies for creativity and rote analysis. When questions are simplistic and the answers are so frigging obvious, then people get the score they want. It's the Dunning Krueger placebo effect.

tim in vermont said...

I found the test more interesting than I expected as well. For internet shots at going viral, that is saying something. Does that mean it was perfect? No, but it was better than my exceeding low expectation.

Are you a genius? With such scores, you would be categorized as having a "genius I.Q.

I think he answered your question in the quote Robert. I took an on-line test once in verbal facility, and the answer came up "poetic genius!" I didn't quit the day job.

Charles said...

Robert Cook

I'm no genius...far from it, hence my reason for questioning the scores.

Kinda nice to have a little sunshine blown up my ass though.