People associate emotional valence with the side of their dominant and nondominant hands. In particular, positive (or negative) valence is linked with the side of dominant (or nondominant) hand. This phenomenon is called the horizontal-valence metaphor. A previous study demonstrated that participants placed a “good” object on the side of the dominant hand and a “bad” object on the side of the nondominant hand (Casasanto, 2009, J. Exp. Psychol.: Gen, 138, 351–367). This phenomenon indicates that the horizontal-valence metaphor influences human behavior. However, later studies reported that the effect of the horizontal-valence metaphor did not occur in the other tasks. The findings of these studies raise the following question: is the effect of the horizontal-valence metaphor robust? In the present registered report, we conducted a direct replication of Experiment 1 in the Casasanto study (2009). We could not replicate the results of right-handers in the previous study. Moreover, most of the effect sizes in the present research were small, although their results were statistically significant. Our findings throw doubt on the robustness of the horizontal-valence metaphor.
