We all know someone who suffers from ‘resting bitch face’, but science has now proven that those sultry looks are down to small facial signals that could be concealing your real emotions.
According to the Washington Post, researchers used a new face-reader machine to determine what kind of people were classed as having ‘resting bitch face’.
Behavioural researchers Jason Rogers and Abbe Macbeth analysed a catalogue of more than 10,000 faces – mapping 500 points on each one.
The team then assigned an expression based on emotions associated with the points: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, contempt, and neutral.
Rogers explained how the machine was picking up on slight signals like “one side of the lip pulled back slightly, the eyes squinting a little. It’s kind of a tightening around the eyes, and a little bit of raising of the corners of the lips — but not into a smile.”
To establish a base, researchers had the machine search and assess a series of genuinely expressionless faces. Those expressions registered at around 97 percent neutrality.
The remaining three percent included ‘little blips of emotion’ – but nothing significant.
The team then entered celebrity faces most commonly associated with resting bitch face into the machine reader – we’re looking at you Kristen Stewart and Victoria Beckham – to show the level of emotion on their faces.
The result showed more than double the emotion score registered on the face – which was commonly associated with a look of contempt or anger.
So what does this mean about those scowl faces?
Chances are they’re not angry – they just can’t hide their emotions.
