People Are Really Two-Faced

Why is the right side "public," the left "private "?

Portrait painters and photographers know only too well that the human face is asymmetrical; wrinkles and eyebrow movements vary, and the smile usually breaks from one side to the other. What is more, each side seems to express a different feeling. This phenomenon can best be shown by first covering one half of the face in a portrait, then the other. In most cases, the right side of the subject's face (on the viewer's left) appears pleasant or blank; the left side looks worried, fearful or even a bit sinister. The difference is even more pronounced when a composite face made of two left sides is compared with one composed of two right sides.

Taking note of this right-left difference, Psychologist Werner Wolff of Columbia University suggested in the 1940s that the right side is the "public" face, and the left the "private," registering emotions that are not intended to be conveyed. Yet this strategy of "hiding" unacceptable emotions on the left side of the face could be effective only if the public side had far more impact on the viewer. Wolff found this to be so; after studying the faces of others, subjects in his experiments noted that the right side of the face looked more like the whole face than the left side did. But Wolff could not explain why.

Now a team of psychologists thinks it has the answer. Writing in the journal Science, Harold Sackeim of Columbia and Ruben Gur and Marcel Saucy of the University of Pennsylvania report that the left side of the face is not perceived well by a viewer. The team bases its conclusion on split-brain research, which shows that the right hemisphere of the brain has predominant control over the left side of the face and that the left hemisphere governs the right side. Other studies indicate that the right hemisphere of the brain is better than the left in recognizing faces and processing emotional information.

As the researchers explain, when two people stand face to face, the right eye of one studies the left side of the face of the other. The right eye, in turn, is controlled by the left hemisphere of the brain, the half that is less deft at reading images. Thus people may unconsciously mislead one another by presenting a confident or blank public expression on the right side of the face, where it has a strong effect, and by "hiding" strong emotions on the poorly perceived left side.

In the course of the studies, Sackeim's team found that negative emotions registered heavily on the left side, but positive emotions spread more evenly across the entire face. Says Sackeim: "We believe the two sides of the face are differently involved in experiencing happy and unhappy states." Other researchers have reported "small correlations" between emotional illness and a high degree of facial asymmetry. Sackeim is currently studying these results. "Why should people with greater facial asymmetry report more neurotic symptoms?" he asks. "We don't understand the connection."

Sackeim's interpretation of the evidence is that the emotional left side of the face may have evolved to convey a clear message about feelings--the facial expression is more strongly drawn to compensate for the poor ability of the left brain to read faces. Sackeim's research has also convinced him that the brain's right hemisphere is more heavily involved in expressing emotions than the left. What does it all boil down to, in practical terms? When in doubt about anyone's feelings, just study the left side of the person's face with your left eye.

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