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A Neat Trick To Determine Your Dominant Eye

by 44 Comments

It turns out that not all eyes were born equal, and that most of us have one dominant eye. The dominant eye, is the one your brain prefers when it comes to processing visual input, and you should probably use that eye when looking through the viewfinder.

A Neat Trick To Determine Your Dominant Eye

Here is a neat trick you can preform to discover which of your eyes is the dominant one. Courtesy of reddit user ElementK.

  • Extend both hands forward of your body and place the hands together making a small triangle (approximately 1/2 to 3/4 inch per side) between your thumbs and the first knuckle like this.
  • With both eyes open, look through the triangle and center something such as a doorknob in the triangle.
  • Close your left eye. If the object remains in view, you are right eye dominant. If closing your right eye keeps the object in view, you are left eye dominant.

What are you? A lefty or a righty?

[via reddit]

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Filed Under: DIY

About Udi Tirosh

Udi Tirosh is the Founder and Editor in Chief of DIYPhotography, he is also a photographer, a relentless entrepreneur, a prolific inventor and a dad, not necessarily in that order

  • Frank Nazario

    Left eye dominant… perfect. the controls of my nikon d3200 are easier to reach because of the way i position my head with the camera.

  • Mike Schumann

    Probably because their comments have proper spelling and grammar – I know, this must be confusing for you.

  • Mike Schumann

    Doesn’t seem to make a difference for me, I’m getting mixed results.

    • Lara Catherine Noack

      That may be because you don’t have a dominant eye. neither of your eyes is dominant most likely in this case

  • Larry V

    There are two totally different thoughts on this method. I’ve always believed my right eye is the dominant eye and the tests I’ve used are like the one above. I close my right eye and the object doesn’t move, close my left and it does. S/B right eye dominant. But on a WiKi search, it said just the opposite. So did an optometrist that just gave me an eye test. She said the eye that made the object jump, ie., the one you can’t see it, is the dominant eye, as did the WiKi search. I respectfully disagreed with her and she seemed put off that I would question her. So any doctors out there to settle this?

    • Geeee

      I’m not a doctor, but I am studying this type of stuff at uni and I’d say that your optometrist is wrong, you see more through your dominant eye therefore the image shouldn’t move. Your recessive eye will see less because it isn’t as widely used. You automatically look through your dominant eye for microscopes etc, and for me this is my right eye, which corresponded with my results, so yeah. I’d disagree with her.

    • nic

      Wow! Are you sure you werent misunderstanding each other? How the eye that moves the object be dominant when closing or opening? Oh, closing your dominant eye will cause the vision to switch to your recessive. Ok, now that makes sense. An opening your dominant eye again will cause it to move back again. Closing recessive shouldnt change the movement. Does that make sense(pun)?

  • Matt

    Really lol

    • aenews

      I’ve had the same problem with all the vision tests since I see two triangles or two thumbs. None of them seem to explain this but it seems that many people do in fact see doubles.

  • Retrocausal

    Left eye dominant. Usually left handed, but with a fair amount of ambidexterity.

  • Alllens

    Charles, You’re right of course. Two eyes = two holes to look through, so which do you pick?

    I don’t think one eye or the other is necessarily stronger or better, just that the brain picks one over the other so that it can avoid what you saw – double images of things.

    I found that when I look through the hole lined up with my dominant eye, the far object appears in the hole.

    When I look through the hole for the non-dominant eye its a little different. If I don’t try to focus on one eye, that hole and its image tends to fade out, leaving the other image more prominent.

    • Shel

      You should not be making 2 holes. You make ONE hole using both hands. Your right and left forefinger should touch and your right and left thumb should touch

  • Arthur Boone

    For objects closer, my right eye is dominant, for objects that are far, my left eye is dominant.

    • nic

      Ya, thats interesting. How much does far and near change it!

  • Ryan Showalter

    Weird. Doesn’t seem to work, but maybe thats because neither eye is dominant? Rare but seems to be the case.

  • Mario Sergio Barrios

    that just means you don’t have a dominant eye. Both are equal in power. It’s not a bad or a good thing, it’s just a thing… The article failed to mention that there is three options of dominance (instead of two): right, left, or none.

  • Left eye dominant, right-handed. That means I’m cross dominant. I’m klutzy and this very well explains it. Look up cross dominance and you will see in I’m right.

  • Nuala Maher

    I know my right eye is dominant because my left eye is messed up, but I see fine w/ both eyes open.

  • Carol

    Right handed, but left eye is dominant. Before the test I was sure that my right eye would be dominant. Weird.

    • Lara Catherine Noack

      I would say do some research on cross dominance. I have some cross dominance stuff. I am left-handed, my left eye is the dominant eye, I play guitar hero with my lefty controls because I can’t play worth crap on the normal righty controls, believe I kick soccer balls and footballs with my right foot better but I could do either but I believe I do better with my right . I also think I do better Frisbee throws with my right and I think I play bowling better with my right hand , and I use scissors with my right hand , and I use the computer mouse with my right hand . And when going downstairs that have railings on either side are usually by default , not intentional, automatically always go on the right side. and most of that is not something I chose most of that such as scissors and computer mouse are by automatic default righty and I can’t control that I’ve tried my brain will not allow me to use lefty scissors or the lefty mouse even though my teachers always insisted I must be lefty because I write Lefte and that’s not how it works for everybody nobody could figure out why I was so insistent on using regular scissors in my right hand instead of lefty scissors because I was a lefty I should be able to use lefty scissors and should suck at using right scissors but that’s not the case and I could never explain it it’s just the way it is. Everybody always thought I must be ambidextrous because they figured that’s part of being ambidextrous but I don’t know if that’s exactly quite ambidextrous or not because I can’t quite do writing with both hands and I can’t use the computer mouse with both hands and I can’t use scissors with both hands I suck at using lefty scissors and I suck at using the lefty mouse . No matter how much I try I get so backwards it messed up

  • Elijah Vonfange

    It seems my right eye is the dominant one.

  • Anonymous

    Right Handed, Left Eyed

  • Eric Mathiasen

    Since this is a photograph site, I’ll point it that if you shoot with a camera that has a viewfinder (as opposed to one with a screen, such as a camera phone), chances are you already use your dominant eye with the viewfinder, just naturally, because it will “feel” like you see better with it.

  • Erin McMichael

    The left hemisphere of our brain controls our visual output of our right eye and the right hemisphere controls the left eye, which could explain why the majority of people are typically going to feel naturally more comfortable using their left eye if they are right handed, which the majority of people are. This is of course for those who believe that lefties are right brain dominant and righties are left brain dominant. So most of us will have our dominant eye be the opposite from the hand we use more dominantly. Of course there are exceptions because of the prevalence of mixed handedness (not to be confused with ambidexterity).

    • Erin McMichael

      I’m a lefty and my dominant eye is overwhelmingly right.

  • Jimmy Nguyen

    True. But for me, looking at the one on the right feels more natural and is more clear to me (the other one being slightly blurrier) – so I am left eye dominant. Even my optometrist said that I am left-eye dominant because my left eye can see a little better (through vision tests) than my right eye.

  • aenews

    The problem is that we see two triangles. I would say I’m more right-eye dominant since the left eye triangle is more transparent

  • #Mafia736

    sorry but it worked for me

  • Lee Plummer

    Actually it’s very useful, in the military they teach us this, we were trained by snipers, rangers, and marines for convoy security element, trained for basically a black hawk down situation. Within this training they teach you this trick for basic shooting to help harness your skill. Where the proof lies is in myself, you see the thing is I’m right hand dominant, I use my right hand for everything, but I learned in the military that I was left eye dominant due to this trick. Now where it benefited me was I decided when shooting I would rather shoot with my left hand versus my dominant hand which is right, due to me changing hands while shooting because of my dominant eye, proved to be better, since I had more stability by holding the rifle with my dominant hand(right) while shooting with my left, which in that situation the only thing the shooting hand does is pull a trigger and aim, it does not support the rifle, also it allowed me to shoot with my dominant eye(left). Now the end result was an expert rating with my left hand due to my dominant eye, versus my sharpshooter rating with my right hand which is my dominant hand. So I say use this trick it is truly beneficial to anyone using a single sight or shooting especially if you dominant hand is opposite of you dominant eye.

  • Hannah Fort

    Mine stays the same, so do I not have a dominant eye? Wait I just did somemore testing this is fake it depends where you put your hands to where one of your eyes will appear your dominant eye.

  • LeoLiuosh

    Instructions for dummies: move your two hands into a triangle in front of you as instructed. STOP. With which eye did you naturally choose to have the item in as whole to begin with? That is your dominant eye. You can move your hand left to right to switch the eye but that doesnt tell you anything other than you are being an idiot

    • Ryozuo

      When I put the door knob in the middle of the triangle and open my right eye, it goes significantly to the left, same with the left eye (but going to the right). The article doesn’t mention it but there are people with no dominant eye.

      • TobiWanKenobi

        Same happened with me at first, but the I realised I was doing it wrong.
        You’ve just gotta throw the triangle up, without thinking to much about. Don’t make a conscious effort once you’ve made the triangle to centre the door knob. Then do the eye closing thing. Turns out my right eye is very dominant.

        @Ryozuo:disqus this might be the same with you, I dunno.

  • TobiWanKenobi

    You’re right, you’ve got to “throw” the triangle up

  • Garrett Peppers

    Just focus directly on the doorknob, don’t try to focus on either of your hand openings, I found this was the best way to do it, and it definitely worked for me.

  • Cuso

    Both move for me. And when I try to look at an object through the triangle, my vision gets crossed.

    I imagine that means I am neither?

    • SandWyrm

      That may indicate an astigmatism. Which means that one of your eyes isn’t able to precisely match the motion of the other. This runs in my family, and I always see double unless I mentally force my eyes to align. But I’m still left-eye dominant according to this test, and it bears out when I use my camera. With my right-eye, my pictures are always a bit tilted, and I have to really focus to overcome that. When using my left eye in the viewfinder, my pictures are straighter without my having to concentrate at all.

      • Cuso

        Hm. I think I recall being told I have atsygmatism

      • Cuso

        An astigmatism

  • Tricia Sutton

    my dr said I was left eye dominate (I’m right handed). Then he fitted me with mono vision contacts with left being for distance and right for close up. Does wearing contacts change the outcome of this test? I am wearing the kind that stay in the eye and haven’t been taught on how to remove them so I can’t test the theory but if I do this test now, my right eye is dominate. So either the dr is wrong or the contacts change the outcome. Any one know?

  • This test is bogus. All it tests is if you are right or left handed not which eye is dominant. Try swapping which hand goes in front when you make the triangle. I get the opposite result when I swap hands. When my right is in front, I naturally move the triangle to the left in order to center the doorknob and it therefore remains centered when I close my right eye.

    When I swap hands (left hand in front), and perform the test without thinking about it, my hands naturally move in the opposite direction. Whichever hand you put on top of the other determines which way you will center the object, not which eye is dominant.

  • See Min Lim

    It doesn’t work actually. If the object you choose is to your left, your right eye becomes the dominant eye. Vice versa. Even if you try to have it in the centre, chances are they will still be tilted a bit. Just a slight tilt when looking ahead was enough to change the result I got from this test.

    • Cc Hu

      I found the same.

  • nic

    Thats what I do! So youre naturally left eye dominant? Howd it work for you putting the contact lens in your right?

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