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. 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? 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. 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. They tested images and videos featuring celebrities who are famous for displaying RBF, including Kristen Stewart, Queen Elizabeth and Kanye West.
– 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.)