Composition in portraits: Selfies and wefies reveal similar biases in untrained modern youths and ancient masters^*

* This paper is dedicated to the memory of Vittorio Girotto, a dear friend and an outstanding scientist. Vittorio was the first to encourage us to investigate selfies after one of us (NB) presented preliminary results at an invited colloquium at IUAV in 2012. His intellectual contributions will be deeply missed in all areas of scientific psychology.

ABSTRACT

Previous analyses suggest that artists prefer poses showing the left side of the subject’s face when composing a portrait, but showing the right side when composing their own self-portrait. There is also some evidence that artists may prefer compositions with key features on the right of the picture. Do these findings generalize to spontaneous, pseudo-artistic productions by individuals with no formal training in painting and art history? To investigate this issue, we tested a sample of 104 British schoolchildren and teenagers (mean age = 13.8 years; 80 females). We analysed posing biases in individual photographic self-portraits (“selfies”) as well as of self-portraits including also the portrait of a friend (“wefies”). Our results document a bias for showing the left cheek in selfies, a bias for placing the selfie-taker on the right in wefies, and a bias for showing two left cheeks over two right cheeks, again in wefies. These biases are reminiscent of what has been reported for selfies in adult non-artists and for portraits and self-portraits by artists in the 16th–18th centuries. Thus, these results provide new evidence in support of a biological basis for side biases in portraits and self-portraits independently of training and expertise.

KEYWORDS:

• Self-portraits
• portraits
• selfies
• wefies
• side bias

Acknowledgements

CB and MB conceived the study; CB collected the data; NB analysed the data; and NB and MB wrote the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Nicola Bruno http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4948-9746

Notes

* This paper is dedicated to the memory of Vittorio Girotto, a dear friend and an outstanding scientist. Vittorio was the first to encourage us to investigate selfies after one of us (NB) presented preliminary results at an invited colloquium at IUAV in 2012. His intellectual contributions will be deeply missed in all areas of scientific psychology.