We study the ea42323b" title="Click to view the MathML source">cosϕh azimuthal asymmetry in double polarized semi-inclusive pion production by considering the twist-3 effects directly from a quark–quark correlator. In particular, we evaluate the role of the transverse momentum dependent distributions and eabfc1cad480c4859cd4"> on the asymmetry. Using two different sets of spectator model results for these distributions, we predict the ea42323b" title="Click to view the MathML source">cosϕh asymmetry of π+, π−, and eaf74215" title="Click to view the MathML source">π0 at the kinematic configuration available at CLAS, HERMES. Our estimate shows that the asymmetries for charged and neutral pions are sizable and could be accessed by CLAS and HERMES. We also calculate the asymmetries for charged hadrons at the kinematics of COMPASS and compare them with the experimental data. We find that the asymmetry at COMPASS in our model is small which is consistent with the COMPASS data. We also find that ea1e831e1ffc4cb461c283c04b247d"> gives the dominant contribution to the ea42323b" title="Click to view the MathML source">cosϕh asymmetry, while the contribution of ea986b9890d669832658b67c964ef6" title="Click to view the MathML source">eL is almost negligible.