Hemisphericity and Journalism—How Do Journalists Think?

Abstract

The article presents a study on learning and thinking styles among journalists. Many researchers have hypothesized that persons choose certain careers that characterize their predominant mode of thinking. Artists, musicians, dancers and sports figures are said to be right-hemisphere dominant as well as politicians and architects, lawyers and accountants and computer programmers are said to be left-brain dominant. The study shows that reporters who have supportive images in mind would have trouble reporting unpleasant facts and that reporters who have hostile images in mind would have trouble reporting pleasant facts. Thus, where a person's images are incongruent with the character of the event being described, accuracy in reporting is reduced. The majority of journalists in the sample were found to prefer predominantly a right or integrated style of information processing. Journalists as a whole in this study very often preferred the integrated style. Thus education training in universities for journalists should include the integrated style of thinking with the student being exposed to a variety of styles.