Right or Left?

August 21, 2009 by Jerry 

right_or_left

(Olivier Fontana of Microsoft, who recommended the subjects of both prior blogs this week, also suggested today’s. It’s become Olivier Fontana Week.)

We live in a right-dominant world. Estimates of the right-handed majority range from five to one all the way up to nine to one. This dominance is also reflected in our language; think about the many common phrases that attribute positive values to the right:

  • “It’s all right with me”
  • “All’s right with the world”
  • “My right hand”
  • “Right-of-way”

Conversely, think about the many common phrases that attribute negativity to the left:

  • “Left out”
  • “Out in left field”
  • “Two left feet.”
  • “Left-handed compliment”

The Latin origins of the words—“dexter” means “right” and “sinister” means “left”—carry the same values forward. And the French counterpart extends them still further: “Gauche” not only means “left” but also “wrong.” Coming full circle, “gauche” is now part of our English vocabulary meaning “lacking social polish; tactless.”

The roots for this division of values go all the way back to our distant ancestors. Rudolf Arnheim, the author of Art and Visual Perception, a 1954 book that has become a bible for cinema students, theorizes that early humans were influenced by the sun’s movement across the sky from left to right.

A current website offers another look back to the days of cave dwellers:

                  A person who was born right-handed would fight with a weapon in his right hand and use his
                  left hand to shield himself; a left-handed person would fight with his left hand and shield himself
                  with his right hand. A person who uses his left hand to shield himself protects his heart, which
                  is on the left side of the body. So, many right-handed persons who were wounded would survive,
                  while left-handed persons would suffer wounds around their heart and die.

                  Over the course of evolution, this higher survival rate among right-handed persons could
                  have led to more persons being born right-handed.

Evolution then brought these roots forward into today’s right and left preferences. Earlier this month, a Newsweek article, reported on a scientific study of personal preferences driven by handedness. The study found that:

                  …people with different physical characteristics, such as being right- or left-handed, form different
                  abstract concepts, corresponding to those physical traits. For southpaws, the left side of any space
                  has positive moral, intellectual, and emotional connotations; for righties, the right side does.

The study, published in the August 1st issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology, asked subjects to evaluate the resumes of job candidates printed side-by-side. The results showed that:

                  …right-handers tended to choose the person described on the right, but left-handers chose the
                  one on the left

So Mother Nature has imprinted a distinct tendency to favor one side or another.

But so has Nurture. In Western culture, we have all learned to read from left to right. As a result, rightward movement is more natural and therefore more appealing than leftward. This basic training is so potent, it influences all people, both righties and lefties equally.

All of this adds up to a significant factor in presentations with particular regard to the position, movement, and direction of all matters visual. This includes the design and animation of your graphics and even the arrangement of the physical elements of your presentation—which will be the subject of the next blog.

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