So Jason Rogers and Abbe Macbeth, behavioral researchers with global research and innovation firm Noldus Information Technology, chose to investigate: Why are some faces seen as truly expressionless, but others are inexplicably off-putting?
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In this Dec. 10, 2015 photo, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II sits at a desk in the 18th Century Room in Buckingham Palace in London, after recording her Christmas Day broadcast to the Commonwealth, to be broadcast Friday, Dec. 25, 2015. Anna Kendrick, Kirsten Stewart, and even Kanye West are said to be the poster children for RBF.
Indeed, FaceReader registers the small amounts of contempt that are not present on the neutral face of someone without resting bitch face.
But, remember, it’s not you, it’s them.
So it seems we have been misinterpreting people’s neutral facial expressions as RBF all along.
If you have been bestowed with a “Resting Bitch Face” (RBF) you’re probably used to hearing it being compared to a “slapped arse” or being told to “cheer up, love” with excruciating regularity.
As guinea pigs for the FaceReader, Rogers and Macbeth input a few RBF-afflicted celebrities, namely Kristen Stewart and Kanye West. They discovered that the FaceReader registered “contempt” on these faces, thanks to certain characteristics.
“As you can see in the picture… your face is read as purely neutral”.
Very subtle changes in expression could trigger the FaceReader (and therefore, also regular humans) to read the expression as full of contempt, like “one side of the lip pulled back slightly, the eyes squinting a little”, Rogers explained. FaceReader, being a piece of software and therefore immune to gender bias, proved to be the great equalizer: It detected RBF in male and female faces in equal measure.
The cues are understated, yet the machine detects and interprets them the same way our human brains do, she said.
Such was the case for Kendrick who was often reminded by her directors, when she was younger, to smile more often.
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“That’s something that’s expected from women far more than it’s expected from men, and there’s a lot of anecdotal articles and scientific literature on that”, says Macbeth. If you’re not quite sure what on earth we’re talking about, it’s likely you’re pulling an RBF right now yourself. “The internet erupted. Some argued RBF was a progressive antidote to mainstream media portraying women in a permanent state of ‘I’m so happy and cute”, while others suggested RBF was a direct obstacle to female progression. Now you can find out for sure.
