Adults' preferences for side-of-hold as portrayed in paintings of the Madonna and Child

Abstract

Most women hold infants on their left side. They do the same when depicted in works of art. Does the latter accurately reflect the real-life bias, the artist's own aesthetic preference, or something else, such as the artist's handedness, sex, direction of attentional bias, or even the artist's own side-preference for holding infants? As a first step to finding out, we showed 272 young adults (85 men, 187 women) 20 pairs of paintings of the Madonna and Child, the original on one side, its mirror-reversal on the other, and asked which one they preferred. Along with assessing the effects of the variables already mentioned, we used equal numbers of paintings originally depicting left-holds and right-holds to control for the possible effects of differences between the paintings other than side-of-hold itself, such as in their colour scheme, background details, and the type of hold shown (e.g., cradle vs seated on lap). Each pair was presented twice, once with the original on the left, once on the right, for a total of 40 trials. Women and men alike more often preferred left-hold images, but the difference was significant only for women. Preferences were also stronger for original left-hold paintings than for the mirror-reversals of original right-hold paintings, suggesting that the originals differed in ways affecting preference beyond those we tried to control. Overall preference for left-hold images was enhanced when the images were on the viewer's left. As for the other variables, they were for the most part unrelated to preferences. The reasons for the preference thus remain unclear but it is evidently affected by multiple variables, with at least some clearly different from those affecting side-of-hold preferences of real mothers holding real infants.

Visual Laterality of Calf–Mother Interactions in Wild Whales

“…Hence, the calves with the left eye/right hemisphere preference receive more chances for better performance and survival. The same could be true for primate infants (and actually, not necessary restricted to them) who, being held by their mothers preferentially on the left, spend more time looking at the mother's face with the left eye than with the right [66]–[68]. A number of hypotheses have been put forward in order to explain left-sided bias in cradling the infants in humans and its possible influence on development of handedness in children [66], [67].…”

Which cheek did Jesus turn?

“…For example, investigators have examined portraits of the Madonna and indicated that the child Jesus is usually depicted on Mary's left, likely because of the right-handed female bias to hold an infant in her left arm (Harris, Cardénas, Spradlin, & Almerigi, 2009). Most of the pictures show her to the right of Jesus at the foot of the cross.…”

Which way did he go? Film lateral movement and spectator interpretation

“…The tendency to grant primacy to the right is as old as the earliest recorded religion and as new as the hottest current media technologies. Right-primacy is manifested in behaviors, such as movie theater seating (Harms et al, 2014), and in aesthetic preferences, such as directionality in paintings (Harris et al, 2009). A number of video games have featured rightward movement as the dominant direction.…”