This Is Why You Have Resting Bitch Face, Acccording to Science
No, you're not imagining it. Resting bitch face is real - now backed by science! - and there are noticeable physical aspects of your face that give off the "don't talk to me" vibe.
Jason Rogers and Abbe Macbeth, behavioral researchers with international research and innovation firm Noldus Information Technology, used a fancy machine called a Noldus's FaceReader to determine what makes people have "resting bitch face," according to the Washington Post.
The machine looked at a catalogue of more than 10,000 faces and mapped 500 points on each one. Then, it assigned an expression based on emotions associated with the points: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, contempt, and neutral.
The most common term matched with expressionless faces was neutral. But when they tested the faces of celebs known to have RBF, like Kanye West, Kristen Stewart, and Queen Elizabeth, the level of emotion on their faces jumped from the average of 3 percent to 6 percent.
"The big change in percentage came from 'contempt,'" Macbeth told the Post. Rogers explained 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."
But the Post points out the good news in all of this: Since the FaceReader has no gender bias, it could settle this nagging (and sexist) question once and for all. Do women have RBF more often than men? Nope, it measured equally for both genders.
So, Kanye, you're not alone.
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