The Write Bias: The Influence of Native Writing Direction on Aesthetic Preference Biases

Leftward asymmetries and preference biases are commonly observed among various aspects of spatial composition in artwork. This leftward asymmetry is particularly prominent when examining populations whose native language reads from left to right. However, examination of non-Western populations whose...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychology of aesthetics, creativity, and the arts creativity, and the arts, 2016-05, Vol.10 (2), p.128-133
Main Authors: Friedrich, Trista E., Elias, Lorin J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aesthetic Preferences
Female
Human
Lateral Dominance
Male
Reading
Right Hemisphere
Spatial Perception
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Leftward asymmetries and preference biases are commonly observed among various aspects of spatial composition in artwork. This leftward asymmetry is particularly prominent when examining populations whose native language reads from left to right. However, examination of non-Western populations whose native language is read from right to left often demonstrates a weakening or elimination of the commonly observed leftward biases. The current study examined aesthetic preferences in native Hindi (left-to-right) and Urdu (right-to-left) readers. These groups share extralinguistic and linguistic similarities, as well as a common geographical location and cultural foundation, reducing the potential influence of confounding cultural differences on aesthetic preference biases. Participants viewed mirror-imaged pairs of mobile objects and landscapes in both static and dynamic form and subsequently judged which stimulus was more aesthetically pleasing. Despite the cultural similarities between the sample groups, native left-to-right readers demonstrated a strong preference for stimuli with left-to-right directionality (η2 = .220), whereas right-to-left readers failed to demonstrate a preference bias. Furthermore, the magnitude of the preference biases observed by both groups was larger for the dynamic stimuli compared to the static stimuli. This pattern of results provides evidence that the strength of aesthetic bias is influenced by both behavioral biases, such as scanning habits developed from reading direction, and neural and anatomical asymmetries in spatial attention mechanisms.
ISSN:1931-3896
1931-390X
DOI:10.1037/aca0000055