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Eye centring in selfies posted on Instagram

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  • Nicola Bruno
  • Marco Bertamini
  • Christopher W Tyler

Abstract

Earlier work by one of us examined a historical corpus of portraits and found that artists often paint the subject such that one eye is centred horizontally. If due to psychological mechanisms constraining artistic composition, this eye-centring bias should be detectable also in portraits by non-professionals. However, this finding has been questioned both on theoretical and empirical grounds. Here we tested eye-centring in a larger (N ~ = 4000) and more representative set of selfies spontaneously posted on Instagram from six world cities. In contrast with previous selfie results, the distribution of the most-centred eye position peaked almost exactly at the horizontal centre of the image and was statistically different from predictions based on realistic Monte-Carlo predictions. In addition, we observed a small but statistically reliable pseudoneglect effect as well as a preference for centring the left-eye. An eye-centring tendency appears to exist in self-portraits by non-artists.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicola Bruno & Marco Bertamini & Christopher W Tyler, 2019. "Eye centring in selfies posted on Instagram," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(7), pages 1-9, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0218663
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0218663
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Gemma Learmonth & Aodhan Gallagher & Jamie Gibson & Gregor Thut & Monika Harvey, 2015. "Intra- and Inter-Task Reliability of Spatial Attention Measures in Pseudoneglect," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(9), pages 1-23, September.
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