Tuesday, October 12, 2010

6 Things That Are Secretly Turning You Into A Bad Person: #6. Your Own Facial Expressions


Everyone knows that happiness makes you smile, anger makes you frown and louder-than-expected farts make you raise one eyebrow and point at the guy next to you. Well, scientists have found that our facial muscles are actually controlling your emotions more than you think. If that's not weird enough, Nicole Kidman's weird new face is indirectly responsible for the discovery.
Botox has been making women look sexier since the 1980s, assuming you're sexually attracted to smooth skin and people with awesome poker faces. See, in addition to firming up facial skin until wrinkles disappear, Botox also firms up everything else on your face, until people can't tell whether you're smiling warmly or weeping in terror. But hey, it's not like conveying emotion is your job or anything.

She's just a surprised as you are. You can see it in her eyes.
Well, according to a recent study, injecting Botox into your face not only makes you look like you have no emotions, it actually inhibits your ability to feel them at all. We tend to think of the relationship between our emotions and our face as a one-way street, but apparently your brain likes to check in with your facial muscles before deciding what emotion it should feeling at any given moment. Even if you have every reason to be delighted, if your brain checks in and you're not smiling, you'll still be unhappy. We need a complex series of interactions to occur involving our body, hormones and brain to truly feel something like happiness. And it turns out the part involving our facial muscles is way more important than previously thought.

Researchers found that the people who'd frozen their faces with Botox had lost the ability to feel strong emotions, or in some cases, pretty much any emotion. The study participants didn't even feel affected by "emotionally charged" videos. This is all good news for those of us who haven't yet injected poison into our faces. The study, and others like it suggest that smiling when you're down will actually make you feel happy. If you're one of the millions of women (and some men) who sought the fountain of youth, and ended up with the internal and external emotional range of the T-1000 ... well, at least you aren't that kid who got slapped on the back while making a stupid face in fifth grade. He probably needs help tying his shoes by now.

34 comments:

  1. its a good thing i smile verytime somebody looks at me XD

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  2. Nicole Kidman used to be gorgeous... now she's just stiff.

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  3. Wow.. I didnt think your facial expressions did so much for your emotional status. Great post.

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  4. It's weird to think that not being able to show an emotion on your face makes it harder for you to feel that emotion. Maybe if I get botox on my forehead I'll be less incredulous and/or confused because I can't bring my brows together, lol.

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  5. hmm never though botox would make that happen

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  6. There must be some sort of correlation between this and people that sell their souls to hollywood lol.

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  7. I bought eyes wide shut just to see nicole kidman. what a waste...

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  8. botox is ugly shit, give me some natural girls!

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  9. always get botox. makes me look good.

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  10. Ya look like a bitch, ya get treated like a bitch. Name o tha game.

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  11. any surgery for the ecciste q, not happy with what you have, well, kill yourself

    haha ;D

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  12. Why can't people just be happy with the way they look? I hate all this fake crap

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  13. Screw botox, we age for a damn reason.

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  14. This finding is in line the popular belief that smiling makes you feel better, so I guess there's an element of truth to it.

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  15. i cant wait to get old and wrinkley. Distinguished looking

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  16. thats very interesting.. i wonder if it's entirely true however

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  17. Even a nice jacket can have an effect on your attitude, i think injecting botox in your face can do more..
    I agree with this.

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  18. I LOOK HAPPY THEREFORE I AM! I need to perfect my rage face tho.

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  19. Yeah, this doesn't surprise me. Whoever thought botox was a good idea deserves this crap.

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  20. Hear, hear! When I'm old and decrepit at 30 I want to horrify children with my face!

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  21. I don't like botox

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  22. So that's where all my emotions went! :P

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