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Humans are very perceptive to facial expressions and face-to-face interactions are strongly influenced by detecting very subtle changes in those expressions. For instance, we know someone is pulling our leg when we see a "twinkle in their eye", or when you're talking to someone and you see a very small change in position of their eyebrows, that can indicate a change in their mood from indifference to annoyance. We can form initial impressions of people based solely on their expressions, and some people just rub us the wrong way because they might have RBF: Resting Bitch Face (also called Bitchy Resting Face). These are people who always seem to look annoyed or pissed-off, but it might not be their fault. A couple of behavioral researchers think they have figured out why we react so negatively to these expressions and they've posted their research.
We all know the face. No, not just the face, but that face. That look that she swears is not a look. She says she's not angry; she reassures you she's having fun. But her face has been "throwing shade" all night – without saying anything, that face is indicating that she is not happy; more than not happy, she's about to make your night miserable too.
They ran thousands of pictures through a facial recognition program designed to detect emotions. What they saw was that most neutral expression faces registered low indicators of emotion, but fairly equally distributed across emotions; however, pictures of people who are said to exhibit RBF all seem to consistently register strong indicators of contempt. People seem to develop stronger opinions against those who look like they're showing contempt rather than those who look angry or grumpy.
While on the same continuum as anger, the philosopher Robert C. Solomon and others, such as researcher John Gottman, treat contempt differently – it's more a blend of anger and sadness directed at those deemed below you. Contempt is maladaptive in that it is particularly toxic when it develops between people in a relationship.
Do you have RBF? Remember, admission is the first step to recovery.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Saturday February 06 2016, @07:14PM
someone's facial expression is known in psychology as their affect display. [wikipedia.org] someone who is "throwing shade" may actually just have a bluntted or flat affect [wikipedia.org] which just means what they are showing doesn't match what they are feeling. the cause of this is completely neural, so it should be no surprise that people with mental illness are more common to have a reduced affect. to bring this full circle, the reason people have even heard of "Resting Bitch Face" is because of popular culture focuses heavily on movie actors/celebrities which have a disproportionate number of people with mentally illness. of course now of you are wondering why so many actors have mental illness, the line between genius and madness is absurdly thin. my own theory is that mental illness is the bridge to the next of human evolution where you have the brilliance commonly associated with the mentally ill and the self-control of a normal brain.