Researchers have been able to classify what is more popularly known as "Resting Bitch Face" (RBF) as another emotion that our hard-wired brains identify as contempt.
Many celebrities are said to have this expression on their resting faces, which makes people think they are annoyed or being judgmental when actually it is merely their neutral, resting expression. Anna Kendrick, Kirsten Stewart, and even Kanye West are said to be the poster children for RBF.
Slightly squinted eyes and lips ever so slightly pulled back to one side register to observers as contempt, according the researchers of the light-hearted study which used Noldus's FaceReader, a sophisticated software to measure the expressions and emotions on the faces of various subjects and celebrities to determine if there is any measurable determination for RBF.
FaceReader was used to analyze thousands of images the researchers took from Getty, YouTube, and other sources and first established a baseline with faces of people displaying neutral resting faces. Then they ran other photos for the machine to determine if the face was displaying one of eight possible emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, contempt, as well as neutral.
As it turned out, celebrities who are often chided for having RBF, measured highly on the program as expressing contempt even though they were not actually feeling contempt in the photos used.
It is important to note that, just like humans do when they look at someone, the software is only able to measure the appearance of an emotion but cannot determine if the emotion being expressed is actually the one being felt by an individual.
"Something in the neutral expression of the face is relaying contempt, both to the software and to us," said Abbe Macbeth to The Washington Post, one of the behavioral researchers with Noldus Information Technology involved with the study.
The researchers are inviting anyone else who would like FaceReader to determine if they have RBF to email their photos for analysis. The study will be published in October where they will reveal if just like Kanye or Queen Elizabeth, you too have RBF.
And those who have RBF, cheer up! At least you won't be overcharged if comedy clubs start using the facial recognition software to charge you per laugh.
