Side Effects: How our lopsided brain influences everyday behaviour

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There are many population-level behavioural asymmetries that are readily observable in everyday life. Examples include biases in spatial behaviour, posing, turning, kissing, cradling, and embracing. Human behaviour is biased for at least two reasons, (1) The functional and anatomical differences between the hemispheres of the brain, and (2) perceptual training and experience. The research program outlined in this proposal will examine behavioural asymmetries in two types of everyday behaviours: (1) Asymmetries in social touch (hugging, kissing, and cradling) will be explored across cultures, and (2) Asymmetries in everyday spatial behaviours (navigation, judgements of relative position, use of spatial language), will be explored in different contexts. Asymmetries in social touch will be explored for cradling, hugging, and kissing across different emotional contexts. We know that across western cultures, parents tend to cradle infants to the left. However, this has yet to be explored in cultures that read from Right-To-Left (RTL). I am proposing `field' studies of real baby cradling on social media and lab-based studies of cradling a doll, assessing both Left-to-Right (LTR) and RTL reading samples. Lateralization of embracing will also be assessed in LTR and RTL readers across emotional contexts. We will contrast happy versus sad hugs by comparing hugs at airport arrivals gates versus those embraces at the departure gate. Hugs of consolation at funerals will be contrasted with hugs of celebration. Asymmetries in kissing will be assessed across contexts. We know that heterosexual romantic couples show rightward biases while kissing, but does this generalize to homosexual couples? We know that the rightward kissing bias disappears for parent-child kisses, but does it also disappear when kissing a pet dog or cat? Do the rightward biases in kissing attenuate as a relationship `matures'? It central and leftward kisses are more platonic and familial, they might become more common later on in a relationship. Asymmetries in everyday spatial behaviours (use of spatial language, navigation, judgements of relative position), will be explored using mostly `naturalistic' data. When Chaterjee (1995) asked people to draw an agent/receiver relationship , such as "the circle pushes the square", his Western sample tended to put the `agent of action' on the left. Is this effect reversed in RTL readers? Is this same agency bias evident in portraits of pairs with an agency bias, such as a president/vice-president duo? Using fictitious profile pictures and occupations, Mazzurega (2019) found that rightward profiles pictures are perceived as more gender typical for males, and more associated with agentic occupations. Is this effect present in real-world LinkedIn (and other) profile pictures, and does this effect vary with the level of agency in the current occupation?