Page 63 - WTP Vol. VIII#2

of one goes back 100+ million years), and plants and animals flourished back then, so the whole argument about global warming posing a problem must be a hoax. Genuine climatology however takes into consideration the mind-boggling complexity
of climate interactions over time involving ocean temperatures, currents, and chemistry; the sun’s energy; earth’s reflectivity (albedo) and orbit; volcanic eruptions, atmospheric circulation and concentration of greenhouse gases; organic matter; and myriad other factors. Global climate is different from local weather, yet many confuse the two or do not appreciate the distinction.
It’s not unusual in social contexts for someone to raise the idea that cousin Patsy is artistic and Uncle George is logical, so she must be right-brained, and he left-brained. It’s true a fundamental principle of brain organization is that the left half of the brain
“In confirmation bias, we actively look for ways
to justify or defend existing beliefs or preconceptions and ignore or deny conflicting information.”
controls the right side of the body, and vice versa. Indeed, every vertebrate brain is pretty much bilaterally symmetrical, with approximately equal left and right halves. It’s also the case that about 90 percent of people are right-handed, so what’s going on with the two sides of the brain?
In 1871, the French surgeon, Paul Broca, identified a frontal region of the left hemisphere (the third frontal convolution) vital to generating articulate speech. Soon after in 1874, the German neurologist, Carl Wernicke, described an area of the temporal convolution of the left hemisphere key to compre- hending human speech and language. We know Broca’s area is connected to Wernicke’s area, and damage to the former results in telegraphic speech accompanied by simplistic grammar even though an affected individual is otherwise clear about an intended message. Ideas about brain laterality therefore have some legitimate anatomical truth
behind them.
So, are people basically left-brained or right- brained, as we often hear? According to the belief in brain dominance or laterality, one side of the brain determines personality and behavior so that fact- oriented, analytical people are left-brained, whereas creative and intuitive free-thinkers are right- brained. Furthermore, conventional wisdom ac- cording to some people holds getting in touch with our “feeling” (right) brain can promote more posi- tive and creative aspects of being human. Although location in the brain matters greatly for functions such as muscle movement, and people can really be numbers-oriented or art-inclined, scientific re- search does not bear out the cultural exaggeration of left versus right brain dichotomy when it comes to personality. In fact, MRI scans of more than 1000 people’s brains and 7000 different brain regions show people mostly use both hemispheres, without dominance and regardless of personality.
What can we say with confidence about personality then? More than 4,000 words in the English lan- guage describe human personality traits, impressive testimony to the interest folks have had in the topic. Astrology is an example of what psychologists call
a trait or type theory of personality, many of which have been criticized as inadequate to say the least. The pseudoscience of astrology is an example of the Barnum Effect, another bias characterizing the way people tend to see personal specifics in vague state- ments by filling in the gaps, a propensity for which the human brain is most skillful. Historic examples of other trait theories include the introversion- ambivert-extrovert scale of personality suggested by Carl Jung in the 1920s. It’s the old and familiar notion with just a hint of truth proposing introverts are withdrawn while extroverts are outgoing and highly social, and ambiverts are somewhere in the middle. The problem is that such theories (and others from famous psychologists including Carl Rogers, Alfred Adler, Abraham Maslow, Raymond Cattell, and Floyd Henry Allport) are simplistic and inadequate to account for the spectrum of behaviors exhibited by real people in the real world. Often, trait or type theories fail to predict actual behavior in any consistent way from suggested or proposed dominant traits.
Stunning advances in addressing behavioral and health issues have been made on scientific, techno- logical, and medical fronts in recent decades. Ac-
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