Expressive and perceptual asymmetries of the resting face.

Lateral facial composites reveal the asymmetry of the resting face. In the current research, we created lateral composites of 30 resting faces, then had subjects compare the two composites of a face with a depiction of the whole face in either normal- or mirror-image. Results indicate that the side of the face in a subject's left visual hemi-space dominates facial recognition. The magnitude of this bias can be altered by priming tasks. It is a bias in facial perception, not memory.