Abstract
Portrait painters are experts at examining faces and since emotional content may be expressed differently on each side of the face, consider that Rembrandt biased his male portraits to show their right-cheek more often and female portraits to show their left-cheek more often. This raises questions regarding the emotional significance of such biased positions. I presented rightward and leftward facing male and female portraits. I measured observers’ pupil size while asking observers to report how (dis)pleasing they found each image. This was a methodological improvement over the type of research initially done by Eckhard Hess who claimed that pupils dilate to pleasant images and constrict to unpleasant images. His work was confounded since his images’ luminances and contrasts across conditions were inconsistent potentially affecting pupil size. To overcome this limitation I presented rightward or leftward facing male and female portraits by Rembrandt to observers in either their original or mirror-reversed position. I found that in viewing male portraits pupil diameter was a function of arousal. That is, larger pupil diameter occurred for images rated both low and high in pleasantness. This was not the case with female portraits. I discuss these findings in regard to the perceived dominance of males and how emotional expressions may be driven by hemispheric laterality.
Highlights
Portraitures have been shown to exhibit a leftward bias, where the left check is exposed more often than the right
Hemispheric lateralization may play a role by projecting negative emotions to the left-side of the face and positive emotions to the right-side of the face
There was an Portrait Gender by Orientation F (1, 39) = 7.42 p = 0.097, d = 0.86, such that female mirror reversals were rated lower than original female portraits (M = 4.38 vs. M = 4.58), whereas the opposite relationship was found for males (M = 4.35 vs. M = 4.29) [t (1, 78) = 2.72, p = 0.008, d = 0.61; t (1, 78) = 2.51, p = 0.015, d = 0.015]
Summary
Portraitures have been shown to exhibit a leftward bias, where the left check is exposed more often than the right. This occurs more often in female than male portraits which may be due to a desire to portray female’s more emotive left-side. Hemispheric lateralization may play a role by projecting negative emotions to the left-side of the face and positive emotions to the right-side of the face. I found that Hess was incorrect to focus on valence and should have emphasized arousal instead. This finding was evident in male but not female portraits, which may be due to the dominance exhibited in male portraitures
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