No Sex Differences in the Attentional Bias for the Right Side of Human Bodies

Abstract

Ambiguous silhouettes representing human individuals which perform unimanual actions are interpreted more often as right-handed. Such a preference might reflect a perceptual frequency effect, due to the fact that most social interactions occur with right-handers. As a consequence, observers would preferentially attend to the region in which others’ dominant hand usually falls, thus increasing the efficiency in monitoring both aggressive and communicative acts. Given that men can be more dangerous compared with women, the right-hand bias should be larger when observing male rather than female individuals, and given that aggressive interactions involve men more frequently than women, it should be larger in male rather than female observers. However, previous studies did not specifically test whether: (i) male—compared with female—observers pay more attention to the right side of others (regardless of the observed individuals’ sex), or (ii) observers (regardless of their sex) pay more attention to the right side of male—compared with female—individuals. Therefore, in the present study we used ambiguous human silhouettes rotating about their vertical axis with one arm extended in order to determine whether the rightward bias is larger for male rather than female figures and/or in male rather than female participants. According to our data, the bias toward the right side of human bodies was not significantly associated with either the figure’s or the participant’s sex.