"What's wrong?" or "You look mad." Phrases people with "resting bitch face," tend to hear almost daily. A lot of times the response back to these questions or accusations is something along the lines of "that's just my face." Sure, we can't help that it looks like we're staring deep into your soul and we're kind of frightening you a little, but we promise it's not necessarily on purpose. Recent studies have shown that resting bitch face is not only real, but they have software that proves people that have RBF can have a feeling of approval while looking nothing short of dissatisfied with life.
Noldus Information Technology is a company that creates software that comes up with different software to help conduct behavioral and observational research. Recently, in a study conducted by scientists Abbe Macbeth and Jason Rogers, the company's software known as "FaceReader" was put to use. What does the software do exactly? Well, it reads people's faces. They used pictures of celebrities that are known to have "RBF" including Anna Kendrick and Kanye West. They found that images of celebrities who had an "annoyed expression" on their face showed concealed emotions that people who were not known to have RBF did not have.
The machine works by using images that show people with "neutral faces." Most facial expressions are considered to be 97 percent neutral and the other 3 percent is the concealed emotion usually involving contempt. People with RBF? Yeah, their percent involving concealed emotion doubled to 6 percent. This jump detected was mostly cause due to contempt.
Although RBF tends to be associated with women more than men, RBF is just as common in men as it is women. MacBeth and Rogers say that the reason we try to put RBF on women more than men is due to the fact that our culture sees women to be "more smiley."
Macbeth and Rogers want you to know, however, that because humans are "wired" to feel nervousness or restlessness when having the sense of being judged, they are able to detect more contempt. RBF is just as common in men as it is women. They say that the reason we try to put RBF on women more than men is due to the fact that our culture sees women to be "more smiley."
Oh! So that's why people say they're scared of me. OK, that makes sense now.
If you have RBF, wear it with some validation now because you can. Or if you think you have it but want to be sure you can email a photo of yourself to jason@noldus.com and you'll find out for sure.
