Studies have found a tendency for heads in portraits to be oriented so that more of the left side than the right side of the face is visible, though it is stronger in female than in male portraits. Two studies are reported that set head orientation in the context of body and gaze orientation, and additionally look at effects of artistic medium (paintings, photographs, and drawings) and changes in the tendency over time. There was a strong congruency between body, head, and gaze orientation. In particular, body and head had the same orientation in more than three-quarters of the portraits in both samples. Gender differences were found only for paintings and only in Study 1. There were several strong effects of artistic medium; for example, frontal orientation of gaze was much less common in drawings than in paintings and photographs. There were also several changes over time; for example, frontal orientation of body and head tended to increase going into the twentieth century. The results show that body, head, and gaze direction need to be considered together, and hypotheses concerned only with head orientation cannot provide a complete explanation for posing orientation. Four possible approaches to explanations are briefly discussed.

研究发现，肖像的头部趋于定向，以便可以看到脸的左侧多于右侧，尽管女性肖像要比男性肖像强。据报道，有两项研究将头部取向设置在身体和凝视取向的背景下，此外还研究了艺术媒介（绘画，照片和绘画）的效果以及趋势随时间的变化。身体，头部和凝视方向之间有很强的一致性。特别是，在两个样本中，超过四分之三的肖像中，身体和头部的朝向相同。仅在绘画方面和研究1中就发现了性别差异。例如，凝视的正面方向在绘画中比在绘画和照片中要少得多。随着时间的流逝，还有一些变化。例如，进入二十世纪，身体和头部的正面方向趋于增加。结果表明，必须同时考虑身体，头部和凝视的方向，仅与头部方向有关的假设无法提供姿势姿态的完整解释。简要讨论了四种可能的解释方法。