Personality Type and Left Handedness: The Anti Authoritarian Daydreamer

Left handed people really seem to be a different species to the right handed majority. Evidence has proved there is a connection between personality type, learning preference, talents and handedness.

Bossy Left Brain or Recessive Right Brain

The Left Brain and the Right Brain

Two Brains and Two Personalities

This all goes back to the hemisphere of the brain. It is widely known that we have two brains: the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere. As the left hemisphere controls the right side of the body, right handed people would be governed mostly by the left brain. Left handed people (on the other hand – pardon the pun) favor the right brain. In fact, we use both brains, or we couldn’t live, but favor one side more than the other. This is known as ‘lateral dominance’. I researched into lateral dominance during my teacher training and found a connection between this and learning styles (how people prefer to learn).

Left Handed People and Personality Type

But how does cerebral hemispherical dominance relate to personality traits and talents? Well, although both brains would on the surface appear alike (a mirror image of each other) there are differences. The speech centre (Broca’s area) is found in the left hemisphere. It has now been accepted that both hemispheres function differently and therefore see the world differently.

Right Handed People and the Rational

The left hemisphere of the brain (that controls the right side of the body) is the following:

Verbal, analytical, logical, sees sequentially, stereotyping, temporal, ordered, sees the world in its parts, tries to make sense of things, remembers lyrics above melodies, names rather than faces, down-to-earth, understands the abstract. It can also be rather bossy, opinionated and makes rational associations.

The ‘left brain’ is also known by the following synonyms: the male brain, the major hemisphere, the sequential thinker, the inchworm, the logical brain, the dominant brain and the thinker.

Left Handed People and the Emotional

The right hemisphere (that controls the left side of the body) is the following:

Emotional, sees holistically, silent, instinctive, forgets about time, sees the world as it is, quixotic, thinks in the concrete, visual, is silent, remembers melodies above lyrics, remembers faces above names, is rebellious and makes bizarre associations and is therefore creative. Sadly, the right hemisphere, being silent, is easily dominated by its more verbal, leftie neighbor.

This ‘right-brain’ is also known as the female brain, the minor hemisphere, the holistic thinker, the grasshopper, the creative brain, the recessive brain and the artist.

Daydreaming Left Handedness

Handedness and personality types would seem to have a correlation by evidence. The right brain tends to daydream, is emotional, thinks in pictures, is anti-authoritarian, dislikes conventions and makes irrational connections between ideas. It might be true that right handers also possess some of these traits, but remember one in ten of the population is left handed. A larger ratio than this comprises notable names in the music industry, the arts and great scientists. Consider Hendrix, McCartney, Newton, Beethoven, Picasso, DaVinci, Michelangelo, Chaplin Curie and loads more.

The left hander, incidentally, is also more likely to be schizophrenic (well, you can’t have it all).

Left Handed Learning Styles in Schools

Left handed people have personality traits according to history, where some are given to emotions, such as embarrassment, anger and stubbornness. This might be due to the emotional right brain. The left hander also makes bizarre associations to make creative leaps. Some of these left-handed traits resound with me. Could this really be due to being a left hander? I dislike reading instructions, and prefer to get on and assemble that wardrobe. I also make random associations and have been a terrible daydreamer at school.

Right-Handed Schools

How reassuring to think that some of these great lefties in history have also daydreamed. Many flopped in formative education which incidentally, possesses a right-handed way of teaching (reading instructions sequentially, lots of verbal with abstract concepts). Only in later life on escaping the prescriptive classroom, did many of the great left handers blossom in the world.