Incidence of the half-left profile pose in single-subject portraits.

The present work recorded frequencies of five poses (left profile, half-left profile, full-face view, half-right profile, and right profile) by examining 4,180 single-subject portraits of various media. Statistically significant differences were found between the incidence of half-left and half-right profiles. These differences found across media, authorship, and five centuries of portrait work are consistent with right-hemisphere activation models in attentional bias and perception of emotion.