Resting Bitch Face, or RBF--the look that has been affecting people around the world for years. You know the look. The one that tends to make nice people look like total bitches. It’s the look that tells people to stay away from you and can kill the possibility of becoming friends with someone. You can’t control it and most of the time you have no idea you’re making it. If you still have no idea of what I'm talking about, think Kristen Stewart.
Why do we make this face? What are we feeling that causes an expressionless look to appear on our faces? What makes us register an expressionless or neutral face as resting bitch face?
These questions led behavior researchers, Jason Rogers and Abbe Macbeth, to investigate. “We wanted this to be fun and kind of tongue-in-cheek, but also to have legitimate scientific data backing it up,” Macbeth said.
Rogers and Macbeth worked with Noldus Information Technology to use a FaceReader in order to determine why our brains analyze and recognize a neutral expression as RBF. According to an article in the Washington Post, a FaceReader is “a sophisticated tool engineered to identify specific expressions based on a catalogue of more than 10,000 images of human faces." The software, which can examine faces through a live camera, a photograph, or a video clip, maps 500 points on the human faces, then analyzes the image and assigns an expression based on eight basic emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, contempt, and "neutral." In other words, a FaceReader can determine what you are feeling by analyzing your face.
For the study, the researchers submitted a serious of expressionless faces into the FaceReader in order to find a baseline. The FaceReader found that the images displayed 97 percent neutrality. The remaining 3 percent found traces of emotions like sadness or surprise. This number doubled when researchers submitted photos of celebrities like Kanye West, Kristen Stewart, Queen Elizabeth, and Anna Kendrick, who have become the famous faces of RBF.
The FaceReader detected a higher level of emotion as well as a wider variety of emotions in the images. “The big change in percentage came from ‘contempt,' ” said Macbeth. Both studies explained that the software reads contempt with subtle signs such as tightened, squinting eyes or lips being pulled back slightly with the corners of the lips raised. So what does this detection mean? According to the researchers, our brains read neutral expressions as relaying contempt, which is one possible reason for interpreting our neutral expressions as resting bitch faces.
The FaceReader detected a higher level of emotion as well as a wider variety of emotions in the images. “The big change in percentage came from ‘contempt’.” said Macbeth. Both research explained that the software reads contempt with subtle signs such as tightened, squinting eyes or lips being pulled back slightly with the corners of the lips raised. So what does this detection mean? According to the researchers, our brains read neutral expressions as relaying contempt, which is one possible reason for interpreting our neutral expressions as resting bitch faces.
The study also highlighted the finding that RBF affects both men and women in the same way. The FaceReader “detected RBF in male and female faces in equal measure. Which means that the idea of RBF as a predominantly female phenomenon has little to do with facial physiology and more to do with social norms.” Researchers believe this to be true because our society expects women to look happy and smile more than men. This expectation makes us more attuned to notice a woman’s expression compared to a man’s.
So do you think you suffer from resting bitch face? Researchers Rogers and Macbeth, invite everyone to find out. You can now submit a photo of your own face to be analyzed by the FaceReader. All you have to do is email a photo of yourself to jason@noldus.com and he’ll send you the results.
