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Article
Does the Left Hair Part Look Better
(or Worse) Than the Right?
Jeremy A. Frimer
1
Abstract
This article provides the first experimental tests of whether the side of the head on which a person parts his or her hair affects the
person’s appearance and perceived character. The popular culture view is that the left hair part makes a person appear more
competent and masculine and the right part warmer and more feminine. Participants judged the appearance of a portrait with a
hair part on one side, or a digitally altered version in which the hair part was reversed (while the face remained the same). Three
studies (total N¼3,819) found that hair part does not alter appearance. The null results generalized to male and female models,
smiling and neutral expressions, and hair parts flowing with or against the hair whorl. The popular belief that hair part alters one’s
appearance may either be a myth of underspecified.
Keywords
hair part, attractiveness, facial asymmetry, warmth, competence
In the 1978 Superman movie, Christopher Reeve played the
feeble character Clark Kent, who parted his hair on his right.
When Kent emerged as the powerful Superman, his hair was
parted on the left. The next year, U.S. President Jimmy Carter
made the same hair part switch from right to left (Murphy,
1999). And in 2008, Hillary Clinton made the opposite switch
from left to right (Ellerson, 2008). These examples may
reflect a circulating belief in the population that a person’s
hair part changes a person’s appearance and perceived charac-
ter strengths.
Fashion websites (e.g., Female Magazine, 2013), magazines
such as The Atlantic (Murphy, 1999) and The New Yorker
(Schillinger, 2001), and podcasts like Radiolab (Abumrad &
Krulwich, n.d.) offered advice about parting the hair on the left
to look competent or masculine and on the right to look warm
or feminine. The belief appears to have been reified by a
nuclear physicist and cultural anthropologist team, who devel-
oped what they call the hair part theory (Walter & Walter,
1999), and spun off a company that sells nonreversing mirrors.
Evidence supporting the view that hair part orientation
affects appearance has been correlational, unsystematic, and
inconsistent. For instance, Walter and Walter (1999) reported
a larger tally of U.S. Presidents that parted their hair on the
left than the right, with the former set appearing to have
higher approval ratings than the latter. They provided no
inferential tests and did not address the reverse causal or third
variable problems. Moreover, their data have not been sub-
jected to peer review. Rigorous scientific investigation of this
matter has been conspicuously absent, and psychologists
almost entirely reticent.
One prominent psychologist, Nicholls, speculated about
why hair part might change a person’s appearance, without
claiming that it would (Abumrad & Krulwich, n.d.). If the dis-
tinct nature of the hair part directs observers’ attention to the
adjacent side of the face, then hair parts could change a per-
son’s overall appearance when the model is expressing positive
emotion. This is because, as a result of cerebral hemispheric
lateralization, the left side of the face is more emotionally
expressive than the right side (Borod, Kent, Koff, Martin, &
Alpert, 1988; Borod, Koff, & White, 1983; Campbell, 1978;
Ekman, Hager, & Friesen, 1981; Indersmitten & Gur, 2003;
Nicholls, Ellis, Clement, & Yoshin, 2004; Rubin & Rubin,
1980; Sackeim & Gur, 1978; Sackheim, Gur, & Saucy, 1978;
for a meta-analysis, see Skinner & Mullen, 1991). This leads
to the prediction that left hair part will improve the overall
appearance of a person, especially when the person is showing
positive emotion. An alternative possibility is the null: that the
side of the head on which one parts their hair has little or no
effect on their overall appearance. The goal of the present
research was to provide the first systematic tests of whether
hair part influences attractiveness and perceived character.
1
Department of Psychology, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Manitoba,
Canada
Corresponding Author:
Jeremy A. Frimer, Department of Psychology, University of Winnipeg, 515
Portage Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada R3B 2E9.
Email: j.frimer@uwinnipeg.ca
Social Psychological and
Personality Science
1-9
ªThe Author(s) 2018
Reprints and permission:
sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1948550618762500
journals.sagepub.com/home/spp
Study 1
Study 1 experimentally tested whether hair part alters appear-
ance along several traits. Popular culture and hair part theory
have speculated about the moderating role of gender. I thus
included both a male and female model. The theory that the
left side of the face is more emotionally expressive than the
right gave rise to the prediction that facial expression might
moderate the effect of hair part on appearance. I thus included
both smiling and neutral expressions. And I included four
traits: overall appearance, warmth and competence (the pri-
mary dimensions of social judgment; Abele & Wojciszke,
2013; Cuddy, Fiske, & Glick, 2007; Rosenberg, Nelson, &
Vivekananthan, 1968; Trapnell & Wiggins, 1990), and femi-
ninity/masculinity.
Method
Participants
Sample size was determined before any data analysis. To
determine a sample size, I required an effect size estimate.
Unfortunately, no research has directly tested whether hair
part orientation influences a model’s appearance. How-
ever, if hair part directs attention to its adjacent side of the
face, then the asymmetry in emotional expressiveness
might provide an appropriate effect size estimate. Inders-
mitten and Gur (2003) reported an asymmetry effect size
of d¼.55 when participants viewed left–left or right–right
composites of smiling faces. Insofar as split half compo-
sites would double the available information, I reasoned
that the hair part effect size might be approximately half
of the reported one, d¼.28. I recruited a conservatively
large sample to bias the study in favor of detecting a small
hair part effect, if one exists. Thus, rather than using the
conventional 80%power, I sought 99.99%power, necessi-
tating a sample of 1,648.
I report all measures, manipulations, and exclusions in all
studies. I recruited N¼1,654 participants from Amazon’s
Mechanical Turk (AMT; each received US$0.30). The sample
spanned much of the life span (18–81 years) with M¼35.8
(SD ¼11.7) and was gender balanced (55%male, 45%
female). Most participants (81%) were from the United States,
with minorities from India (14%), Canada (1%), and 4%from
29 other countries combined.
Procedure
Participants viewed four portrait images. For each participant,
the hair part in all four images was on the left or on the right
(randomly assigned between-subjects; ns¼843 and 810,
respectively). The images were from the Chicago Faces Data-
base (Ma, Correll, & Wittenbrink, 2015; see Figure 1). They
depicted a White female or White male model, with either a
neutral or a smiling expression. Each image was in black-
and-white and 400 pixels tall. I used black and white because
it was more amenable to image preparation than color images.
The four images (2 models 2 expressions) appeared in coun-
terbalanced order. All of the original images had the hair part
on the model’s left. I digitally altered the hair part to create the
right part images (see Figure 2).
Figure 1. Experimental stimuli (Study 1). Participants saw four pictures of a male and female model with a neutral and smiling expression.
I randomly assigned each participant to see the hair part on the left or the right in all four portraits. The order of presentation was
counterbalanced.
2Social Psychological and Personality Science XX(X)
Image preparation. A critical design feature was portrait pre-
paration. Simply flipping a portrait horizontally would be sub-
optimal because it would flip the facial expression along with
the hair, introducing a confound. Ideally, the stimuli would
hold the face and its expression constant, while horizontally
flipping the hair part. To achieve this, I digitally altered the
original images by horizontally flipping the hair without chang-
ing the facial features. Figure 2 illustrates the image prepara-
tion process.
Appearance. Participants rated the models’ appearance on a
scale from 0 to 10 on four traits. The question asked, “how does
this person look?” The trait rating scales were bipolar: (a) ugly
(0)–attractive (10), (b) cold (0)–warm (10), (c) incompetent
(0)–competent (10), and (d) masculine (0)–feminine (10). For
the male model, I reverse scored the final item and refer to it
as “gender consistent.”
Results
Figure 3 shows how hair part orientation had a negligible effect
on the rated appearance and character of the portrayed models.
I systematically tested whether hair part changes the appear-
ance of a person, and whether any such changes depend on
whether the model is male or female, whether the model is
smiling or has a neutral expression, and whether it depends
on the perceived trait. Table 1 presents the results of a 2
(model: male, female) 2 (expression: neutral, smiling) 4
(trait: attractive, warm, competent, gender consistent) 2 (part
direction: left, right) mixed-model analyses of variance
(ANOVA; with the first three factors within-subjects and the
final factor between-subjects). Hair part direction did not alter
the appearance of the models, regardless of the model’s gender,
expression, or trait, or any combination thereof. Hair part
did not alter the impression on any of the 16 variables (see
Tables 2 and 3). Given the null findings, I used Bayesian anal-
ysis to estimate the posterior probability of the null (Masson,
2011) and found that all effects involving hair part had >96%
probability of the null being true given the data.
Might the failure to detect an effect of hair part on appear-
ance be a product of participants not paying attention? If so,
then I would expect other appearance factors (such as smiling)
to also yield null results. However, Table 1 shows that every
other factor in the omnibus reached statistical significance, and
six of the seven had very large effect sizes. For example, smil-
ing had a sizable impact on the models’ appearance. The failure
to detect an effect of hair part on the overall impression does
not seem to be explained by participants not paying attention.
Discussion
A high-powered experiment failed to detect any effect of hair
part orientation on a portrait’s appearance, regardless of whether
the subject was female or male, or had a neutral or smiling
expression. In contrast, impressions varied with every other fac-
tor involved (i.e., the model, perceived trait, expression, and
their interactions), meaning that hair part was unique in its non-
relation to impression. These results provisionally suggest that
hair part has little or no effect on appearance. To reach that con-
clusion requires interpreting a null effect. A limitation of Study 1
was the absence of positive evidence that hair part does not alter
appearance. I aimed to address that in Study 2.
Study 2
Study 2 leveled the conceptual playing field between the
hypothesis that one hair part is better than the other and the
hypothesis that there is no difference and tested whether one
was more supported. Participants simultaneously viewed a left
part and an analogous right part portrait, side by side. If hair
part does not alter appearance, the modal response should be
to deny a question about which one looks better by indicating
that neither is better. I also tested whether the belief that hair
part matters is widespread.
Method
Participants
Participants were 913 Americans on AMT (51%male, M¼37
years old, SD ¼11, range 18–73) recruited the same way as
in Study 1.
Figure 2. The digital process that reversed the hair part while leaving the face and its expression unchanged.
Frimer 3
5.85
3.83
5.74
7.33
5.82
3.94
5.66
7.26
012345678910
Attractive
Warm
Competent
Feminine
Female with Neutral Expression
Her Left
Her Right
5.31
4.64
5.67
6.47
5.39
4.64
5.72
6.54
012345678910
Attractive
Warm
Competent
Masculine
Male with Neutral Expression
His Left
His Right
7.72
8.14
5.67
8.54
7.69
8.12
5.72
8.63
012345678910
Attractive
Warm
Competent
Feminine
Female with Smiling Expression
5.06
7.26
6.20
6.26
5.08
7.26
6.34
6.22
012345678910
Attractive
Warm
Competent
Masculine
Male with Smiling Expression
Figure 3. Ratings of the female and male models with neutral or smiling expressions and with the hair part on their left or right. In spite of the
large sample size and statistical power, analyses failed to detect any significant variance associated with hair part. Error bars are 95% confidence
intervals.
Table 1. Null Hypothesis and Bayesian Statistics From 2 (Model: Male, Female) 2 (Expression: Neutral, Smiling) 4 (Trait: Attractive, Warm,
Competent, Gender Consistent) 2 (Part Direction: Left, Right) Mixed Model Analyses of Variances for Each of the Four Traits.
Null Hypothesis Testing Bayesian
Factor FpZ2
pp
BIC
(H
0
|D)
Model 971.69 <.001 .375
Expression 2,457.26 <.001 .603
Trait 442.67 <.001 .215
Part direction 0.11 .74 <.001 .985
Model Expression 1,377.67 <.001 .460
Model Trait 303.75 <.001 .158
Model Part Direction 0.54 .46 <.001 .964
Expression Trait 1,017.73 <.001 .386
Expression Part Direction 0.01 .91 <.001 .988
Trait Part Direction 0.02 .99 <.001 >.999
Model Expression Trait 26.09 <.001 .016
Model Expression Part Direction 0.19 .66 <.001 .974
Expression Trait Part Direction 0.59 .62 <.001 >.999
Model Expression Trait Part Direction 1.98 .12 .001 >.999
Note. BIC ¼Bayesian information criterion.
4Social Psychological and Personality Science XX(X)
Procedure
Participants indicated which of two portraits they preferred,
indicated their own preferred hair part for themselves, and
reported demographics.
Judgments of portraits. Participants viewed two portraits of a
female model (see Figure 1). The two portraits were side by
side. In one portrait, her hair part was on her left. In the other
portrait, her hair part was on her right. Participants responded
to the question, “which of these looks better?” by selecting one
or the other image, or by indicating “neither/same.” Given the
leading nature of question and the obvious difference in the two
portraits, the demand characteristic was likely to select one or
the other portrait, stacking the odds against finding evidence
that they are the same. Participants viewed both the neutral
facial expression portraits and the smiling portraits, with the
order of presentation counterbalanced. The placement of the
portraits (i.e., the left hair part to the left or right of the right
hair part) was also counterbalanced.
Judgments of self. Participants reported their belief about their
own hair part. The question asked, “does it look better when
you part your hair on your left or on your right?” Response
options were “better on my left,” “better on my right,” “exactly
the same,” and “unsure/don’t care.” Because participants who
selected the final option (n¼208) may not have a hair part
(or hair for that matter), I treated their responses on this item
as missing data.
Results
Judgments of Portraits
When viewing the two portraits of the same subject with a neu-
tral expression and a hair part on the left or right, the numbers
of participants who select the left part,right part, and same/nei-
ther options were not evenly distributed, w
2
(2, N¼911) ¼
107.25, p<.001,j¼.343. Table 4 shows how participants
who indicated that the right part or left part was superior were
underrepresented, whereas participant who indicated that they
look the same were overrepresented. I found the same general
pattern with the smiling expression portraits, w
2
(2, N¼911) ¼
33.41, p< .001, j¼.192 (see Table 4), wherein people who
indicated that there was no clear winner were overrepresented,
and participants who preferred the left part were underrepre-
sented. These results favor the hypothesis that there is no differ-
ence between the two.
Comparing only those participants that indicated a prefer-
ence for the left or right hair part, I found no bias on the neutral
expression, z¼0.14, p¼.59, relative risk (RR) ¼0.99, and a
small bias favoring the right part when the subject was smiling,
Table 2. Inferential Statistics From 2 (Model: Male, Female) 2 (Expression: Neutral, Smiling) 2 (Part Direction: Left, Right) Mixed-Model
Analyses of Variances for Each of the Four Traits.
Attractive Warm Competent Gender Consistent
Factor FZ2
pFZ2
pFZ2
pFZ2
p
Model 922.83*** .360 1.37 .001 276.34*** .144 861.27*** .346
Expression 460.44*** .219 2,676.19*** .620 868.19*** .347 249.45*** .133
Part direction 0.07 <.001 0.24 <.001 0.15 <.001 0.00 <.001
Model Expression 1,014.62*** .382 524.46*** .242 434.34*** .210 485.39*** .230
Model Part Direction 0.67 <.001 0.16 <.001 2.92y.002 0.00 <.001
Expression Part Direction 0.13 <.001 0.22 <.001 1.06 .001 0.18 <.001
Model Expression Part Direction 0.19 <.001 0.89 .001 0.00 <.001 3.74
y
.002
yp< .10. *p< .05. **p< .01. ***p< .001.
Table 3. Contrasts Between the Left and Right Hair Part for All 16 Impression Variables.
Trait
Neutral Expression Smiling
Difference [95% CI] pdDifference [95% CI] pd
Female subject
Attractive .02 [.22, .17] .82 .010 .02 [.19, .14] .87 .018
Warm .11 [.12, .34] .34 .047 .02 [.20, .17] 1.00 .005
Competent .10 [.30, .10] .34 .048 .00 [.17, .17] .33 .000
Feminine .08 [.27, .12] .43 .040 .08 [.08, .23] .38 .044
Male subject
Attractive .09 [.11, .30] .38 .043 .03 [.19, .26] .78 .013
Warm .01 [.21, .23] .91 .009 .01 [.19, .21] .94 .000
Competent .05 [.14, .25] .59 .025 .15 [.06, .35] .15 .067
Masculine .07 [.15, .28] .55 .032 .04 [.26, .18] .72 .018
Frimer 5
z¼2.35, p¼.009, RR ¼1.10. These results need to be inter-
preted cautiously as they ignore the modal response that there is
no difference between the two portraits.
Judgments of Self
In contrast to judgments of the subject (which favored the no
difference hypothesis), participants indicated a preference for
one or the other hair part when it came to their own appearance.
Table 5 presents the results. The responses were not evenly
distributed across the three options, w
2
(2, N¼705) ¼39.05,
p< .001, j¼.235. Right and left part preferences were over-
represented, and the “no difference” response was underrepre-
sented. Comparing only those participants that indicated a
preference for parting their hair on the left or right, responses
were evenly distributed, z¼1.33, p¼.185, RR ¼0.94; gender
did not moderate this general nonpreference, w
2
(2, N¼682) ¼
2.67, p¼.264, j¼.063.
To explore the relationship between judgments of others and
judgments of the self, I coded left part preference as 1, no dif-
ference as 0, and right part preference as 1 and examined the
correlation between preferences for self versus others. Own
part preference was unrelated to preference in others with a
neutral expression, r(701) ¼.030, p¼.431, and with a smil-
ing expression, r(697) ¼.002, p¼.959, meaning that prefer-
ences for one’s own hair part did not generalize to judgments
of others.
Discussion
Leveling the conceptual playing field between hair part theory
and the no difference hypothesis yielded evidence supporting
the latter. However, even after the modal participant indicated
that there is no difference between the left and right hair part
when viewing others, most participants still indicated a prefer-
ence for one hair part over the other for themselves. This
observation may reflect an enduring cultural belief that hair
part matters.
Study 3
A limitation of the previous studies is that they uniformly relied
on models with their hair parted on their left by default. This,
and the inclusion of just two models, limits the generalizability
of the result. In Study 3, I used four new models, all with their
hair parted on their right in the original portraits. A second lim-
itation of the previous studies was the use of portraits in which
the hair flowed with the hair whorl. A hair whorl is the natural
clockwise or counterclockwise directionality of the hair flow
from the scalp. When people part their hair against the whorl,
the hair tends to stand up higher. It remains possible that the left
hair part looks better than the right (or vice versa) when the hair
flows against the whorl. In Study 3, I included models whose
part flowed with or against their hair whorl before digitally
reversing the hair part.
Method
Participants
I recruited N¼1,252 Americans from AMT (each received
US$0.20). The sample spanned much of the life span
(18–80 years) with M¼36.4 (SD ¼11.6) and was gender
balanced (55%male, 45%female).
Procedure
The procedure was identical to that of Study 1, except for the
portraits and character traits. For each participant, the hair part
in all four images was on the left or on the right (randomly
assigned between-subjects; ns¼613 and 639, respectively).
The stimuli were four new individuals from the Chicago Faces
Database (Ma et al., 2015; see Figure 4). They depicted a White
female or White male model, with the hair part flowing either
with or against the person’s natural hair whorl. I ascertained
hair whorls by closely inspecting the orientation of the hair
as it exited the head above the forehead. Unlike in Studies 1 and
2, all of the original images had the hair part on the model’s
right. I again digitally altered the hair part to create the right
part images.
Participants rated each image on six character traits, with
three representing the overarching dimension of warmth/
Table 4. Proportions of Participants That Preferred the Left or Right Hair Part or Expressed No Preference, Along With Statistics Testing
Whether the Proportion Differs From Chance (33.3%).
Neutral Expression (n¼911) Smiling (n¼907)
Preference Observed (%) RR zpObserved (%) RR zp
Right part 25.0 0.75 5.28 <.001 32.2 0.97 0.69 .245
No difference 49.5 1.49 10.32 <.001 41.7 1.25 5.29 <.001
Left part 25.5 0.77 5.00 <.001 26.1 0.78 4.57 <.001
Note.RR¼relative risk.
Table 5. Proportions of Participants That Indicated Their Own Hair
Looks Better When Parted on Their Left or Right, Along With Statis-
tics Testing Whether the Proportion Differs From Chance (33.3%).
Preference Observed (%) Relative Risk Zp
Right part 36.5 1.09 1.72 .043
No difference 22.6 0.68 6.19 <.001
Left part 41.0 1.23 4.27 <.001
6Social Psychological and Personality Science XX(X)
Figure 4. Experimental stimuli (Study 3). Participants saw four pictures of a male and female model with their hair parted against (top row) or
with (bottom row) their hair whorls. I randomly assigned each participant to see the hair part on the left or the right in all four portraits. The
order of presentation was counterbalanced.
12
62
66
82
42
63
13
62
67
80
42
62
0 20406080100
Masculine
Independent
Competent
Feminine
Interdependent
Moral
Female; Parted Against Whorl
On Her Left
On Her Right 75
64
63
14
39
57
74
63
63
15
39
58
020406080100
Masculine
Independent
Competent
Feminine
Interdependent
Moral
Male; Parted Against Whorl
On His Left
On His Right
27
52
53
59
46
54
27
52
53
59
45
55
0 20406080100
Masculine
Independent
Competent
Feminine
Interdependent
Moral
Female; Parted With Whorl
80
64
56
8
37
46
80
64
55
8
36
46
0 20406080100
Masculine
Independent
Competent
Feminine
Interdependent
Moral
Male; Parted With Whorl
Figure 5. Rating of the male and female models with the hair flow parted with or against their whorls and with the hair part on their left or right. In spite of
the large sample size and statistical power, I failed to detect any significant variance associated with hair part. Error bars are 95% confidence intervals.
Frimer 7
communion (moral,interdependent,andfeminine)and
three representing competence/agency (competent,inde-
pendent,andmasculine). The items were from Abele and
Wojciszke (2007), and the scales were anchored at 0 (not
at all), 25 (slightly), 50 (moderately), 75 (very much), and
100 (extremely). The reliability of the aggregates was
somewhat low: the warmth scale’s aranged from .28 to
.70, with M¼0.46, and the competence scales’ aranged
from.26to.49,withM¼0.35. So I analyzed each item
separately.
Results
Once again, hair part orientation had a negligible effect on
the rated character of the portrayed models (see Figure 5).
Table 6 presents the results of a 2 (model gender: male,
female) 2 (flow: parted against or with the whorl) 4
(trait: moral, interdependent, feminine, competent, indepen-
dent, masculine) 2 (part direction: left, right) mixed-
model ANOVA (with the first three factors within-subjects
and the final factor between-subjects). Like in Study 1, hair
part orientation did not alter the appearance of the models,
regardless of the model’s gender, hair flow, or trait, or any
combination thereof. All effects involving hair part had
>96%probability of the null being true given the data. All
effects not involving hair part were again significant and
most had very large effect sizes, suggesting that participants
were paying attention.
Discussion
Study 3 used portraits from four new models and once again
found that hair part did not alter the person’s appearance. The
inclusion of portraits in which the original hair part was on the
right, and the hair part flowed with or against the individual’s
hair whorl, enhanced the generalizability of the findings from
Studies 1 and 2.
General Discussion
Studies 1 and 3 tested whether hair part alters a person’s
appearance. In spite of the large statistical power, the studies
failed to yield evidence that hair part matters, and Bayesian
analyses favored the null. Study 2 supplied positive evidence
that hair part does not alter appearance. The three studies
included six different models. Their original hair part was on
the left or right, they had smiling or neutral expressions, and
their hair part flowed with or against their natural hair whorl.
Together, the findings challenge the conventional wisdom that
the side of the head on which one parts their hair affects the per-
son’s appearance.
A noteworthy design feature of the present studies was por-
traits in which the hair part was digitally reversed without altera-
tion to the hairstyle or facial expression. The strength of this
design feature is that it isolated the effect of hair part orientation
on appearance. Although Study 3 did include portraits in which
the hair flowed either with or against the whorl, an associated
weakness of this design is that the studies do not permit clear
conclusions regarding whether switching one’s hair part alters
a person’s appearance. Switching a hair part from left to right
or vice versa would involve changing whether the hair flows
with or against the hair whorl. Thus, switching hair parts would
change the hair part orientation (left, right) and often change the
hairstyle (e.g., its thickness). If switching the hair part does
change a person’s appearance, the results of the present studies
suggest that it would probably be because of the change in hair-
style and probably not because of the hair part orientation.
The present studies also cannot speak to whether hair
part matters in color portraits, in moving images, or in real
life. Results from the studies do not generalize to non-White
models, or in countries other than the United States. And the
use of six models limits the generalizability of the findings
to these six individuals. Perhaps for some individuals, facial
asymmetries such as distinctive moles, scars, or tattoos, or
even structural asymmetries in the face or hair, could make
the left hair part look better or worse than the right. These
limitations notwithstanding, these studies are the first to test
the popular cultural belief that hair part matters in general.
The results favor the view that the popular belief is either a
myth of underspecified.
Author Note
Open Science Practices: The data sets and stimuli for this article are
publicly available at http://osf.io/hmv8n. All methods are fully
described in the text.
Table 6. Null Hypothesis and Bayesian Statistics From 2 (Model Gen-
der: Male, Female) 2 (Flow: Parted Against or With the Whorl) 6
(Trait: Moral, Interdependent, Feminine, Competent, Independent,
Masculine) 2 (Part Direction: Left, Right) Mixed Model Analysis of
Variance.
Null Hypothesis
Testing Bayesian
Factor FpZ2
pZ
p2
p
BIC
(H
0
|D)
Gender 33.76 <.001 .027
Flow 604.64 <.001 .334
Trait 729.40 <.001 .377
Part direction 0.07 .80 <.001 .971
Gender Flow 29.50 <.001 .024
Gender Trait 4,432.59 <.001 .786
Gender Part Direction 0.20 .66 <.001 .969
Flow Trait 412.46 <.001 .255
Flow Part Direction 0.01 .94 <.001 .972
Trait Part Direction 0.30 .91 <.001 >.999
Gender Flow Trait 153.08 <.001 .113
Gender Flow Part
Direction
0.00 .96 <.001 .972
Flow Trait Part Direction 0.57 .73 <.001 >.999
Gender Flow Trait Part
Direction
0.88 .49 .001 >.999
Note. BIC ¼Bayesian information criterion.
8Social Psychological and Personality Science XX(X)
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to
the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for
the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work
was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada to J. A. Frimer (Grant No. 435-2013-
0589).
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Author Biography
Jeremy A. Frimer is an associate professor in the Department of Psy-
chology at the University of Winnipeg. He studies impression forma-
tion and the moral psychology of follower and leaders within
ideologically minded groups.
Handling Editor: Joseph Simmons
Frimer 9
