TY - GEN ID - cogprints942 UR - http://cogprints.org/942/ A1 - Zaidel, Dahlia W. A1 - FitzGerald, Peter Y1 - 1994/// N2 - The relationship between observers' taste and the sitter's face orientation as function of sitter sex in painted portraits was investigated. The historical tendency in portraiture is that the sitter's left side of the face is more likely than the right to be turned towards the viewer and this side bias is stronger with women than with men. Correctly oriented and reversed museum portraits were viewed by subjects who gave ratings of "liking" the portrait as a whole (Experiment 1) and for "attractiveness" of the sitter (Experiment 2). Only portraits of women showed a left-right difference with right favored significantly over left, irrespective of orientation or type of rating. These findings go against the historical pattern of the sex-related bias in portraiture. They suggest that most women are painted in an orientation which is less favorable to them. PB - Baywood Publishing Company, Inc. KW - art KW - brain KW - creativity KW - portraiture KW - artist KW - sitter KW - studio KW - attractiveness KW - beauty KW - preference KW - face KW - faces KW - sex difference KW - gender difference KW - asymmetry KW - bias KW - paintings KW - hemispheric specialization KW - psychology of art KW - perception KW - pictures KW - painters KW - museum KW - implicit KW - women KW - men. TI - Sex of the face in Western art: Left and right in portraits SP - 9 AV - public EP - 18 ER -