This Doctor Explained Why People May Think The Left Side Of Their Face Is More Attractive Than The Right

@LifeOfADoctor is an emergency physician who has taken social media by storm.

He often goes viral on both TikTok and YouTube for his medical explainers — like this one where he talks about the dangers of lighting scented candles for too long. (Basically, soot can get into your lungs and cause damage.)

Well, one of his videos recently caught the attention of nearly 11 million people when he confirmed that there may be a scientific reason why some people think the left side of their face is more attractive than the right:

In the video, he explains, "It's a phenomenon known as left-side bias. Basically, the right side of your brain controls emotion and expression, but it also controls the left side of your face. So, the left side of the face is better able to express emotion — which more people find aesthetically pleasing."

I know, right? Obviously, we needed to get more information about this! So, BuzzFeed spoke to @LifeOfADoctor to learn more.

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"Let's break down this phenomenon in an experiment performed by psychology professor Dr. James Schirillo and his co-author Kelsey Blackburn. He created digital mirror images of portraits (so that you’re looking at what appears to be someone’s right cheek in the photo, but it’s actually their left cheek in real life)," he said.

In the experiment, both the original photos and mirror images were shown to viewers, and viewers were asked to rate the photos on how aesthetically pleasing they thought each one was. "The viewers were also wearing an eye tracker (a gadget that measures the dilation of the pupil every 17 milliseconds) because previous research has shown that our pupils may dilate when we’re looking at an image that pleases us. With this setup, the researchers were able to assess the viewers’ conscious and unconscious aesthetic reactions to the photos. On average, by both measures, viewers were more likely to rate left-cheeked photos as 'more pleasing' than right-cheeked photos!"

Schirillo and Blackburn suggested that this difference might be due to the left side of our face being able to express a greater intensity of emotion. "The idea that we show more emotion on one side of our faces isn’t new! It’s part of a larger study of what is called emotional lateralization — the idea that the two sides of our brains process and control emotion differently," @LifeOfADoctor added.

So, now that we know left-side bias may be a REAL thing, is there anything that can be done to, uh, make the right side of our faces better looking, lol?! @LifeOfADoctor said not really. "It's worthy to note, that the left-side bias — as well as emotional lateralization — are just theories at this time. Many people prefer the right side of their face, which is totally normal and common! I wouldn't stress too much about it and take everything with a grain of salt."

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If you want to learn more medical facts, be sure to follow @LifeOfADoctor on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube!