A multi-method investigation of individual differences in hemisphericity

The construct of hemisphericity contends that some individuals process information analytically and others holistically, and that these individual differences reflect characteristic preferences or strategies for left- and right-hemisphere processing, respectively. We investigated whether hemisphericity was related to personality variables, as measured by trait anxiety and the tendency to express versus inhibit emotions. Sixty six right-handed subjects completed personality measures and were tested on two occasions with multiple measures of hemisphericity, including dichotic listening, tachistoscopic emotion recognition, verbal ability and spatial ability. Although some of the hemisphericity measures exhibited moderate reliability, they generally did not correlate significantly with each other or with measures of personality. However, a composite hemisphericity index indicated that right hemisphericity was modestly correlated with the tendency to express emotions and left hemisphericity with the tendency to inhibit emotions. We discuss some reasons for the failure to find either construct or predictive validity for hemisphericity.