What is Brain Dominance?

Brain dominance is a term used to describe the way in which our preferred thinking style and personality is influenced by the physical attributes of our brains.

To explain how this works, let’s first consider what we mean by the term "dominance". Most humans develop physical dominance wherever we have the option of developing a preference; for example, 90% of us prefer to use our right hand over our left for tasks such as writing, throwing or catching; we prefer to use one foot over the other when kicking a ball; we even have a dominant eye. You can find out which is your dominant eye by downloading and printing our free Dominant Eye Test Card - click here to download. Dominance is important as it provides us with an automatic lead response to any given situation. For example, imagine that you were standing by the side of the road when a speeding car careered out of control and headed straight for you.

Within a fraction of a second you would have started to run to get out of the way. However, within that moment you would not have paused to think; "which leg shall I push off with when I start running", you would have automatically used your dominant leg. Dominance is therefore a very natural and important part of our make-up.

Dominance is easy to explain where you have two hands or two legs, but how does Brain Dominance occur when you only have one brain?

The reason is that although human brains look like a mass of scrambled egg, it is in fact made up of lots of different parts, each of which process information in different ways. The way we think is therefore influenced by which parts of our brain we prefer to use.

Why is Brain Dominance important?

Just like physical dominance, our Brain Dominance provides us with an automatic lead response to any given situation. This is important as, at any one point in time, we are being bombarded by thousands of bits of information, but our brains can only consciously process around seven pieces of information at any one time.

For example, while you are reading this, your senses are receiving information on the temperature of the room, smells, background noises and the feeling of your clothing on your skin. You were not aware of these things (or you weren’t until reading this brought them to your attention) because your brain was busy with other things.

To cope in a complex world, our brains therefore commit a lot of things to habit, and a lot of these habits are born out of Brain Dominance. Take as an example the famous quote: "Two men looked through prison bars, one saw mud, the other stars." The point is that differences between our physical brains result in different predilections as to how we think.

Additional reading:

The History of Brain Dominance
What are the thinking preferences of the different parts of the brain?
How does the brain grow and develop dominance?
How can Brain Dominance be measured?