Actress Anna Kendrick, a self-described lifelong RBF sufferer. (Jason Merritt/Getty Images) 
 
 Queen Elizabeth has it. So does fashion designer Victoria Beckham. And actress Kristen Stewart — poor thing, she’s practically the poster girl. 
 
 Among the slew of pop culture icons said to be afflicted with so-called Resting Bitch Face (alternatively known as Bitchy Resting Face), the vast majority are women, though Kanye West is among the male examples. All of them have been mocked by Internet commenters for having a certain unintentional expression when their faces are not in motion — a look best described as vaguely annoyed, maybe a little judgy, perhaps slightly bored. 
 
 Since the RBF meme took over the Internet in 2013, fueled by a viral mock-PSA about “Bitchy Resting Face,” legions of people have identified the dreaded phenomenon in celebrity listicles, in their own social circles, even in the mirror. 
 
 
 
 Kristen Stewart of “Twilight” fame, often considered the poster girl for RBF. 
 
 So Jason Rogers and Abbe Macbeth, behavioral researchers with international research and innovation firm Noldus Information Technology, decided to investigate: Why are some faces seen as truly expressionless, but others are inexplicably off-putting? What, exactly, makes us register a seemingly neutral expression as RBF? 
 
 “We wanted this to be fun and kind of tongue-in-cheek, but also to have legitimate scientific data backing it up,” Macbeth said. 
 
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 The researchers enlisted Noldus’s FaceReader, a sophisticated tool engineered to identify specific expressions based on a catalogue of more than 10,000 images of human faces. The software, which can examine faces through a live camera, a photograph or a video clip, maps 500 points on the human face, then analyzes the image and assigns an expression based on eight basic human emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, contempt, and “neutral.” 
 
 To establish a baseline, Rogers and Macbeth first had FaceReader assess a series of genuinely expressionless faces. Those expressions registered about 97 percent neutrality, Macbeth said; the remaining three percent included “little blips of emotion” — a touch of sadness here, a hint of surprise there, but nothing significant. 
 
 
 
 The FaceReader software analyzes Kanye, one of the few men commonly associated with RBF. (Courtesy Noldus Information Technology) 
 
 Then they plugged in photos of RBF all-stars Kanye West, Kristen Stewart and Queen Elizabeth. Suddenly, the level of emotion detected by the software doubled to six percent. 
 
 One particular emotion was responsible for the jump: “The big change in percentage came from ‘contempt,’” Macbeth said. 
 
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 And how exactly does a piece of software measure contempt in a face? 
 
 It’s in subtle signals, like “one side of the lip pulled back slightly, the eyes squinting a little,” Rogers explained. 
 
 Or: “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,” Macbeth suggested. 
 
 The cues are understated, yet the machine detects and interprets them the same way our human brains do, she said. “Something in the neutral expression of the face is relaying contempt, both to the software and to us.” 
 
 
 
 Queen Elizabeth II, also considered a prime example of RBF (even this portrait bust of her, by the late British sculptor Oscar Nemon, looks a bit severe) 
 
 But there was one big difference, she added. 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. Which means that the idea of RBF as a predominantly female phenomenon has little to do with facial physiology and more to do with social norms. 
 
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 Consider actress Anna Kendrick, who has publicly bemoaned the effect of RBF on her life. 
 
 “When she was younger, directors would say, ‘Why don’t you smile more, you need to smile more, you don’t seem like you’re very happy,’” Macbeth said. “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. So RBF isn’t necessarily something that occurs more in women, but we’re more attuned to notice it in women because women have more pressure on them to be happy and smiley and to get along with others.” 
 
 Worried that you might have RBF? Now you can find out for sure. After publishing their results in October, Rogers and Macbeth invited members of the public to submit their own faces for analysis. Guys and gals alike are welcome to email photos of their most “neutral” facial expressions to jason@noldus.com, and FaceReader will tell you if you’re actually expressionless — or if you and the Queen have RBF in common. ||||| We all know that face. Pursed lips, daggers eyes and a look that says, "I hate you," or at least, "I'm annoyed." The expression can wreak havoc on relationships, as highlighted by this comic video from 2013 explaining the affliction popularly known as Resting Bitch Face (RBF), or sometimes, Bitchy Resting Face. 
 
 Jason Rogers and Abbe Macbeth, behavioral researchers with Noldus Information Technology, wanted to find out why some people's neutral expressions are interpreted so negatively, and why we react to them this way. 
 
 They ran a series of videos and images through FaceReader, a software program that maps more than 500 points on a face to determine the emotional expression on display. The software looked for signs it associates with the six universally identified emotions: happy, angry, sad, scared, disgusted and surprised. The software could also identify an expression as "neutral" or as displaying contempt. (According to the study, contempt is a more recently recognized emotion with universal reach that is visually defined as "lips and brow not quite angry or sad, the lip tightened and raised more strongly on one side than the other.") 
 
 They tested images and videos featuring celebrities who are famous for displaying RBF, including Kristen Stewart, Queen Elizabeth and Kanye West. 
 
 Neutral test faces measured very low for signs of contempt, accounting for only 3 percent of the overall emotional expression, but that figure spiked to 5.76 percent on faces displaying RBF. 
 
 This illustration shows how the software interpreted study author Abbe Macbeth's neutral expression, which registered low in contempt: 
 
 Noldus Information Technology 
 
 By contrast, video of this woman in the study registered high in contempt: 
 
 Noldus Information Technology 
 
 "What we take away from this study is that there is an underlying, unconscious contempt aspect to the neutral face of people who are said to have RBF," study author Macbeth told CBS News in an email. "Something in the person's face is relaying greater-than-trace amounts of contempt, but they don't intend that to be the case. Yet the software (and we as humans, viewing the face) see that contempt and react negatively to it." 
 
 A scan of Kanye West's face also registered traces of contempt, the researchers said. 
 
 NOLDUS INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY 
 
 Want to know if you have RBF? You can test yourself on the Noldus Information Technology website. 
 
 And to people who do have RBF -- this author included -- Macbeth says not to worry. "At this point, we can't 'fix' anyone's face, even though we've had requests from people to do so, as this study has hit the internet this week," she said. "I don't think that it's worth getting stressed out over." ||||| February 5, 2016 at 4:00 PM Share 
 
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 Listen, resting bitch face (RBF) is a thing -- you know it, we know it, and now science knows it. In fact, scientists even went so far as to conduct a study on resting bitch face (you know, because inquiring minds apparently want to know why some folks look uber pissed off all the time). 
 
 We all know that Kanye doesn't think smiling is "cool," but as it turns out, he's probably just suffering from resting bitch face like many of us common folk are. The study says that while most faces register 97 percent neutral, with 3 percent underlying emotion (the part that produces resting bitch face), folks like Kanye have more than your average underlying emotion in their expression -- up to 6 percent, in fact. 
 
 Just another reason to note that the music and fashion mogul is super special. We dug up our favorite examples of Kanye showing off his resting bitch face for you to enjoy. You can thank us later. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Image via Splash News
– What do Queen Elizabeth, Kanye West, and Kristen Stewart have in common? They all have Resting Bitch Face—or, as New York puts it, a "face combining disgust, better-than-you snobbery, and boredom." Actress Anna Kendrick even once tweeted, "Is there a filter on Instagram that fixes Bitchy Resting Face? Asking for a friend." The not-so-formal condition came to prominence in 2013 with a "Bitchy Resting Face" PSA by Funny or Die. Now, behavioral researchers Jason Rogers and Abbe Macbeth with Noldus Information Technology have used science to uncover why some people's resting faces are expressionless while those of others are considered angry and judgmental, the Washington Post reports. The pair used software called FaceReader, which maps 500 points on the human face and assigns expressions based on the emotions of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, contempt, and "neutral." When the researchers plugged in faces of famous RBF faces, the software lit up. "Something in the person's face is relaying greater-than-trace amounts of contempt, but they don't intend that to be the case," Macbeth tells CBS News. That includes signals, Rogers tells the Post, such as "one side of the lip pulled back slightly, the eyes squinting a little." One key point: The researchers found that the condition afflicts men and women equally. "This means that classifying RBF as a female-dominant expression of bitchiness is actually quite wrong, and probably a reflection of societal expectations of women," observes the post at New York. (The Stir amplifies the point that men are affected, too, with a gallery of Kanye West RBF photos.) Can anything be done about RBF? "We can't 'fix' anyone's face," Macbeth, also a sufferer tells CBS. But, she adds, "I don't think it's worth getting stressed out over." (Here's one woman talking about her RBF.)