People associate emotional valence with the side of their dominant and non-dominant hands. Specifically, positive (negative) valence is linked with the side of dominant (non-dominant) hand known as the horizontal-valence metaphor. A previous study demonstrated that participants placed a good (bad) object on the side of their dominant (non-dominant) hand (Casasanto, 2009, J. Exp. Psychol.: Gen, 138, 351–367). This phenomenon indicates that the horizontal-valence metaphor influences our behavior. However, subsequent studies reported that the effect of the horizontal-valence metaphor was not found in the other tasks. These studies raise the following question: Is the effect of the horizontal-valence metaphor robust? In the present registered report, we conducted a direct replication of Experiment 1 from Casasanto’s study (2009). We could not replicate the results of right-handers in the previous study. Moreover, most of the effect sizes in present research were small even though their results were statistically significant. Our findings throw doubt on the robustness of the horizontal-valence metaphor. #Pre-registration of the study can be found at https://psyarxiv.com/rfvp2

Positive valence links to the upside and dominant side, while negative valence is associated with the downside and non-dominant side (i.e., space-valence metaphor). Previous studies indicate that the effect of the vertical-valence metaphor is more salient than that of the horizontal-valence metaphor. Furthermore, this difference in the saliency is possibly connected with whether the experimental task is related to reaction time (RT) or not. The present study empirically examined these hypotheses; we conducted both the RT and non-RT tasks (i.e., detection task and pointing task, respectively) and compared these results. We found that the effect of the vertical-valence metaphor occurred in both the RT and non-RT tasks, while the typical impact of the horizontal-valence metaphor was not found in both the tasks. Our findings suggest that the effect of the vertical-valence metaphor is salient while the impact of the horizontal-valence metaphor is not robust. Moreover, this difference in the saliency was independent of the kinds of experimental tasks.