HIGHLIGHTS: A study found getting Botox in your face might make you worse at reading other people’s emotions. Researchers think it’s because we subconsciously mimic facial expressions to help us interpret what someone’s feeling. And Botox prevents that.
FULL STORY: If you fill your face with Botox, it might be hard for other people to read YOUR emotions. That’s not too surprising, but THIS is . . .
A new study found Botox might make the person who GOT the injections worse at reading OTHER people’s emotions too.
Researchers at the University of California-Irvine scanned the brains of 10 women before and after they got Botox in their forehead. The point was to see how their brains reacted to other people’s facial expressions.
Each one was shown photos of happy, angry, or neutral faces, and they had to guess the emotion being expressed. And it turned out they were worse at it after they got Botox.
So does it leak into your brain or something? No, they think it’s because of something called the “facial feedback hypothesis” . . . the idea that we subconsciously mimic people’s facial expressions to help us interpret them.
Their theory is that Botox prevents the muscles in your face from doing it as well, and that makes you worse at reading emotions in general.
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