Stage Left, Stage Right? Position Effects on Perception of Spokesperson

EXTENDED ABSTRACT Imagine that as you read reviews of a celebrity’s TV appear-ances, you are struck by how the reviews differ. On The Tonight Show the celebrity is seen as a leader, steering the interview. However, on Larry King Live she is seen as passive and as if bullied by Larry King. Your first inclination is to attribute the effect to the respective hosts, however, might the differences be accounted for by the position of the celebrity -on the Tonight Show the celebrity appears to the left of Jay Leno and on Larry King Live to the right? The present research sought to investigate this question. It is proposed that the specialization of the right hemisphere in processing faces (Gazzaniga 2000) and nonverbal behavior (Benowitz et al. 1983) mediates the effect of target position on observer perception. When an observer’s attention is drawn to the left visual field, person perception processing in the right hemisphere is activated and leads to greater recall of visual information of the target (Taylor and Fiske 1975) and perception of the target as more instrumental in the interaction.

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