The left: lateral eye movements and ideology.

Summary.-The lateral eye movements of 24 college students were videotaped as they reflected on spatial and analytical questions. As predicted, parricipants with more initial movements to the left had significantly higher scores on the leftirt (or humanistic) index of the Tomkins Polaricy Scale. The direction of this relationship was reversed for the rightist index (right movers scoring higher) but chis difference was not significant. Results are interpreted as additions to evidence which suggests a connection between the left and right sides of the human body and more global dichotomies of ideology or personality. The validity of lateral eye movements as indicators of basic personalicy differences has been investigated by several researchers (1, 2, 4, 5). Duke (4) found that the direction of subjects' eye movements in response to reflective questions is sufficiently consistent to allow classification of subjects as right movers or left movers. Day (2) reported that the left mover is more attentive to internal subjective experiences whereas the right mover is more externally attentive. Bakan found an association between predominance of left lateral eye movements and greater hypnotic susceptibility, clearer imagery, and humanistic interests. He suggests a relationship between such movements and the functional asymmetry of the brain. With these studies in mind, the present study was designed to assess the relationship between performance on the Tornkins Polarity Scale (10) and direction of lateral eye movements. Tomkins' characterization of the "humanistic" versus "normative" ideo-affective postures proposes that more humanistic people rely on internalized experience (as do Day's and Bakan's left movers) whereas more normative people rely on external standards. It was hypothesized, then, that subjects who were left movers would make more humanistic and fewer normative responses on the Tomkins scale than would right movers. The subjects were right-handed undergraduates. 9 males and 15 females. Each subject was brought into a room with a uniform white background and seated 5 ft. in front of a video camera. An experimenter stood directly behind the subject and asked six analytical and six spatial questions (David Galin, personal communication). The subject was asked to look directly into the camera while each question was being asked. Later, the videotape of subjects' responses was viewed independently by three observers. The direction of initial lateral eye movement was scored according to the face of a clock; 1 to 5 constituted an eye movement to the left and 7 to 11 constituted an eye movement to the tight. Vertical movement (6 and 12 o'clock) and lack of movement were scored as nil; eye movements prior to the end of the question resulted in deletion of the item. Any item not receiving a unanimous decision by the three observers was viewed a second time; it unanimous agreement was not reached after review then the item was deleted (10% of all eye movements were deleted due to premature movement or interjudge disagreement). Later the subjects completed the Tomkins scale, and the numbers of normative and humanistic responses were recorded.