Politicians pose left but the voter is always right

Asymmetry in the perception and expression of emotions in the brain can be observed in the cheek presented in a portrait. The left cheek is more often put forward in an emotional photo, but the context of the portrait is important as leftward posing is attenuated in more serious settings. Similarly, leftward posed portraits are perceived as more emotionally expressive. However, there has not been an investigation into how the perception of left and right poses impacts vote choice. We predicted that, when tasked with identifying the portrait they would vote for and the portrait that appeared more friendly, participants would vote for individuals presenting the right cheek and find those individuals showing the left cheek more friendly. Participants' scores indicated more left cheek poses were selected for friendliness and more right cheek poses for voting, with a significant difference found between the conditions. We predicted that more right cheek poses would emerge when a sample of elected officials' portraits were examined. To the contrary, we found a disconnect with participant vote choice as politicians more frequently presented their left cheek, suggesting that it might be time for politicians to put their right cheek forward.