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