Preliminary findings: Preferences of right-handed people for food images oriented to the left vs. right side

Factors influencing the visual deliciousness / eye-appeal of food

“…Relevant here, Shibuya et al (2022) recently reported in this journal that people prefer those food images where the food was presented in an orientation that was easy to grasp by the right hand and bring to their mouth. In particular, 67% of the time when young right-handed Japanese consumers were shown pairs of foods, such as the eclairs in Figure 3, but also several other foods that could also easily be grasped with one hand, such as a sandwich, or a slice of pizza, they preferred the food that was shown oriented from bottom-left to top-right.…”

“…One of the ways in which food can be made more visually-appealing, given the mental simulations of eating that are elicited by viewing food imagery, is to make it as easy as possible for the viewer's brain to grasp, or rather to imagine grasping, the food that is displayed. Making it easier for the viewer to imagine consuming the food (e.g., by orienting the handles of any visible tableware toward the side of the viewer's dominant hand; see Elder & Krishna, 2012;Maille, Morrin, & Reynolds-McIlnay, 2020), helps to make the food displayed that little bit more attractive (see also Shibuya, Kasuga, Sato, Santa, Homma, & Miyamoto, 2022; though see also Simmonds, Woods, & Spence, 2018b). What is more, unhealthy foods have been shown to be strongly associated with the viewer's right side, presumably because they lie close to their normally-dominant hand (e.g., Romero & Biswas, 2016; see also Deng & Kahn, 2009;Kahn & Deng, 2006;Simmonds, Woods, & Spence, 2018b).…”

“…In fact, a growing body of cognitive neuroscience research suggests that our brains not only compute the energy-density of the food displayed visually, but also engage more-or-less automatically in simulating the act of grasping/consuming the food (see Basso et al, 2018). What is more, we appear to like those (food) stimuli that we find it easier to interact (or even simply just imagine interacting) with, such as grasping a sandwich (Shibuya et al, 2022; though see also Spence, 2022c), or picking up a mug with the handle directed toward our dominant hand (Elder & Krishna, 2012).…”

“…In fact, a number of studies of both painting and plating have now highlighted just such a bias (e.g., Youssef, Juravle, Youssef, Woods, & Spence, 2015). Returning to the study from Shibuya et al (2022) that was described a little earlier, one might wonder whether their findings would not be better accounted for in terms of an aesthetic preference for linear elements that ascend to the right (rather than left) on the plate (but also in the aesthetics of painting; see Spence, 2021a, for a review). Unfortunately, however, in the absence of any kinematic data concerning the relative ease of grasping foods in different orientations, it is simply not possible to discriminate this account from the aesthetic preference for linear elements that ascend to the right.…”

Explaining Visual Shape–Taste Crossmodal Correspondences

“…In terms of orientation, it has been reported that linear food elements are preferred when they ascend to the right (rather than the left) on the plate (Youssef et al, 2015). Intriguingly, this preference appears to hold regardless of language (and hence reading direction) and culture (Shibuya et al, 2022;Spence, 2022b). Cardinal orientations for linear food elements are also often preferred over oblique orientations (see Spence, 2019;Spence et al, 2019b, for evidence and reviews).…”