Left Brain, Right Brain
There’s an interesting little left brain right brain test that’s doing the rounds at the moment. Here. Depending upon which way around you see the figure turning, clockwise or anti-clockwise, apparently means that you’re either right or left brained. These are roughly analagous to our systemizing and empathising from the EQSQ personality tests.
It’s all very nice and just so but, unfortunately, isn’t really all that convincing as an explanation. This blog helps to tell us why.
Because the figure is a two dimensional representation of the three dimensional figure, with some care it can be designed so that you can see it turning either way. But which way you see it turning depends less on which side of your brain you use and more on which part of the figure catches your eye first. You’ll then interpret the rest of the sequence dependent upon that first glimpse.
Try doing what I did: look at it, then look away for a couple of seconds and then look back. You’ll find as often as not that the figure appears to have reversed direction. But your brain has clearly not gone from being right to left (or the reverse) in those few seconds.
So it’s an interesting optical illusion, certainly, but it’s not really telling you much about which side of the brain you use: rather, more about how the eye and brain can be fooled by the use of perspective.
October 15th, 2007 at 8:35 pm
I looked and looked, took your suggestion, Tim, and looked away for a bit, then looked back. I can not see any counterclockwise motion. The article stated that most people see the counter-clockwise. Really? I even thought that maybe I was simply forgetting what direction is clockwise, but that wasn’t it. Perhaps there’s some major lack of left-brain functions in my head.
It’s interesting. I liked the article’s descriptions of left-brained functions and right-brained functions. Whether it’s true for all who see the image (or if, like Tim, most viewers will see the image dance in both directions), the descriptions of right-brainers fit me perfectly. It’s frightening sometimes to see yourself defined by assumptions, and have those assumptions be right.
Yes, it’s similar to the systemizer vs. empathizer distinction. But do you think a person can more easily be both systemizer and empathizer than right-sided and left-sided?
By the way, what, exactly, are you looking at to see counterclockwise? The shadow? I just can’t see it.
November 4th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
There’s been a lot about this all over the place. One theory is that if you start by looking at the top of the image, you see it one way, if the bottom, then the other. But I don’t think it’s got much to do with left/right brain either way.