Aesthetic asymmetries, spatial agency, and art history: A social psychological perspective

Suitner, Caterina; McManus, Chris

doi:10.1515/9783110254310.277

Cited by 10 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…In line with our hypotheses, this was true only for male targets, whereas rightward or the leftward profiles of females were chosen at random. Although the dependent variable used here is, to our knowledge, different from any prior study, this result is conceptually in line with analyses of artwork, in which male sitters are more frequently portrayed with a rightward profile than female sitters (Suitner & McManus, 2011). However, in our data, there was no reverse bias for female targets; we therefore concluded that agency is more strongly associated with the rightward trajectory than communion is associated with the leftward trajectory.…”

Section: Results and Discussion Of Studysupporting

confidence: 84%

“…Although there is now growing evidence that people from Western countries envisage agentic targets to the left, acting rightward, its application to the representation of social targets and its relation to stereotype content are still limited to a small number of archival studies (Suitner & McManus, 2011) and even fewer experimental studies (Carnaghi, Piccoli, Brambilla, & Bianchi, 2014;Hegarty, Lemieux, & McQueen, 2010;Maass et al, 2009;Suitner & Maass, 2011). It is important to first establish whether there is a consistent horizontal bias in the representation of social groups differing in agency, specifically women and men (Abele, 2003).…”

Section: Overview Of Aims Of the Present Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For instance, graphs in science tend to be arranged so that data concerning male samples are positioned to the left of female samples (Hegarty & Buechel, 2006). Also, in Western portrait paintings, female targets are more often portrayed facing leftward than male targets (Suitner & McManus, 2011), presumably because men are stereotypically perceived as more agentic and agency is revealed by the left-right (LR) trajectory (Chatterjee, 2002). Similarly, human interactions are envisaged with stereotypically agentic groups (males) to the left of less agentic groups (e.g., females; Maass, Suitner, Favaretto, & Cignacchi, 2009).…”

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confidence: 99%

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From Spatial to Social Asymmetry

Suitner

Maass

Ronconi

2016

Psychology of Women Quarterly

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According to the spatial agency bias model, in Western cultures agentic targets are envisaged as facing and acting rightward, in line with writing direction. In four studies of Italian participants, we examined the symbolic association between agency and the rightward direction (Study 1, N ¼ 96), its spontaneous activation when attributing agency to female and male targets (Study 2, N ¼ 80) or when judging the authenticity of photographs of men and women (Study 3, N ¼ 57), and its possible relation to stereotype endorsement (Study 4, N ¼ 80). In Study 4, we used a conditioning paradigm in which participants learned a counterstereotypical new association; we developed a novel measure to assess the association between gender and spatial direction, namely, the spatial association task. Participants envisaged and cognitively processed male and female targets in line with the spatial agency bias model and reported lower benevolent sexism after learning a new counterstereotypical spatial association. Our findings raise awareness about the biased use of space (and its consequences) in the representation of women and men, so that all people, and especially communicators and policy makers, can actively intervene to promote gender equality.

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Section: Results and Discussion Of Studysupporting

confidence: 84%

Section: Overview Of Aims Of the Present Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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From Spatial to Social Asymmetry

Suitner

Maass

Ronconi

2016

Psychology of Women Quarterly

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“…The Spatial Agency Bias offers an alternate theory, suggesting that figures’ roles in artworks, whether as agents or receivers of action, guide their pose orientation. According to this account, passive portrait poses favor left cheek poses because they emphasize the absence of agency ( Suitner and McManus, 2011 ). Recent analysis of moving images appears consistent with this proposal, finding that the lead male actors in action films do not show a left cheek bias ( Bode et al, 2016 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Consistently Showing Your Best Side? Intra-individual Consistency in #Selfie Pose Orientation

Lindell

2017

Front. Psychol.

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Painted and photographic portraits of others show an asymmetric bias: people favor their left cheek. Both experimental and database studies confirm that the left cheek bias extends to selfies. To date all such selfie studies have been cross-sectional; whether individual selfie-takers tend to consistently favor the same pose orientation, or switch between multiple poses, remains to be determined. The present study thus examined intra-individual consistency in selfie pose orientations. Two hundred selfie-taking participants (100 male and 100 female) were identified by searching #selfie on Instagram. The most recent 10 single-subject selfies for the each of the participants were selected and coded for type of selfie (normal; mirror) and pose orientation (left, midline, right), resulting in a sample of 2000 selfies. Results indicated that selfie-takers do tend to consistently adopt a preferred pose orientation (α = 0.72), with more participants showing an overall left cheek bias (41%) than would be expected by chance (overall right cheek bias = 31.5%; overall midline bias = 19.5%; no overall bias = 8%). Logistic regression modellng, controlling for the repeated measure of participant identity, indicated that sex did not affect pose orientation. However, selfie type proved a significant predictor when comparing left and right cheek poses, with a stronger left cheek bias for mirror than normal selfies. Overall, these novel findings indicate that selfie-takers show intra-individual consistency in pose orientation, and in addition, replicate the previously reported left cheek bias for selfies and other types of portrait, confirming that the left cheek bias also presents within individuals’ selfie corpora.

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“…For example, it could be the result of graphic artists finding it more aesthetically pleasing to have the brain facing to its right. Alternatively, because those in Western cultures read left to right, it makes more sense to encounter the anterior part of any image prior to the posterior (Suitner & McManus, 2011). Finally, it is possible that the effect might be, at least to some degree, due to seeing a greater proportion of portraits facing the right.…”

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confidence: 99%

Turning the Other Lobe: Directional Biases in Brain Diagrams

Wiseman

Owen

2017

i-Perception

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Past research shows that in drawn or photographic portraits, people are significantly more likely to be posed facing to their right than their left. We examined whether the same type of bias exists among sagittal images of the human brain. An exhaustive search of Google images using the term ‘brain sagittal view’ yielded 425 images of a left or right facing brain. The direction of each image was coded and revealed that 80% of the brains were right-facing. This bias was present in images that did not contain any representation of a human head. It is argued that the effect might be aesthetic in nature, the result of the Western tradition of reading left to right or due to the facial factors that underlie the bias previously found in portraits.

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Aesthetic asymmetries, spatial agency, and art history: A social psychological perspective

Cited by 10 publications

References 52 publications

From Spatial to Social Asymmetry

From Spatial to Social Asymmetry

Consistently Showing Your Best Side? Intra-individual Consistency in #Selfie Pose Orientation

Turning the Other Lobe: Directional Biases in Brain Diagrams

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