好色先生

好色先生

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Abstract Details

Creative Paintings Reveal Gender Differences in the Allocation of Spatial Attention
Aging, Dementia, and Behavioral Neurology
Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology Posters (7:00 AM-5:00 PM)
025

To study whether there is a gender dichotomy in pseudoneglect in creative paintings of a man and a woman.
A critical feature of artistic creativity in paintings is the spatial location of the men and women who are being portrayed and their interactions. Prior studies using techniques such as line bisection have shown that healthy individuals have a leftward attentional visuospatial bias (pseudoneglect) and this bias is stronger in men than in women.  Creative artists may have subconscious knowledge of this gender dichotomy.  We wanted to learn if this gender dichotomy might be observed in paintings of a man and woman, such that the artist would be more likely to position men to the right side of women, and that if men would be more likely to attend or look towards women when women are positioned on men’s left side than on their right side.
Image search was conducted via Google search engine. Paintings must contain one man and one woman and with clear gender characteristics. Paintings genres included historical, portrait and genre paintings (paintings of everyday life), and are not limited to any historic genre (e.g. realism, impressionism), time of creation, or country of origin.
Examination of 400 paintings showed no difference in the occurrence of men on the right versus men on the left side of women.  However, more paintings showed men viewing/attending to the women on their left side, compared to when women are on their right side (82% vs. 64%).
These results suggest that creative artists have knowledge of gender and left-right spatial attentional asymmetries.  Although we suspect that this knowledge is subconscious, future research will have to test this subconscious hypothesis.  It would also be of interest to learn how this gender spatial arrangement influences the aesthetic quality of paintings.
Authors/Disclosures
Chichun Sun, DO
PRESENTER 		Dr. Sun has received personal compensation in the range of $500-$4,999 for serving as a Consultant for Alector. Dr. Sun has received personal compensation in the range of $0-$499 for serving as a Speaker with 好色先生. Dr. Sun has received personal compensation in the range of $0-$499 for serving as a Speaker with Pennsylvania Neurological Society.
Benjamin Chapin, MD (UF) Dr. Chapin has nothing to disclose.
Kenneth M. Heilman, MD, FAAN (Univ. of Florida, Dept. of Neurology) Dr. Heilman has received publishing royalties from a publication relating to health care.