Why are infants held on the left? A test of the attention hypothesis with a doll, a book, and a bag.

Most adults, especially women, hold infants and objects representing infants, such as dolls, preferentially on the left side. The attention hypothesis credits the effect to left-directed attention for perception of emotionally salient targets, faces being prime examples. Support comes from studies showing stronger left visual hemispace (LVH) biases in left-holders than right-holders on the Chimeric Faces Test (CFT), but control tests with non-social/emotional objects are needed.

Adults' preferences for side-of-hold as portrayed in paintings of the Madonna and Child.

Most women hold infants on their left side. They do the same when depicted in works of art. Does the latter accurately reflect the real-life bias, the artist's own aesthetic preference, or something else, such as the artist's handedness, sex, direction of attentional bias, or even the artist's own side-preference for holding infants? As a first step to finding out, we showed 272 young adults (85 men, 187 women) 20 pairs of paintings of the Madonna and Child, the original on one side, its mirror-reversal on the other, and asked which one they preferred.