Neurologist Explains What's Off-Putting With Ted Cruz's Face

Trending News: A Neurologist Explains What's Wrong With Ted Cruz's Expressions

Ian Lang

February 9, 2016

Flip

Why Is This Important?

Because just about all humans are experts at reading body language.

Long Story Short

A neurologist explains why Senator and Republican Presidential candidate Ted Cruz's face, pretty much regardless of your politics, makes you want to sock him. In short, it's because he doesn't express emotion the way we expect, and that's unsettling.

Long Story

It's Primary election day in New Hampshire, and despite a surprising win in the Iowa Caucuses, Senator Ted Cruz is a longshot for the Republican win according to early forecasts. Part of that is due to a smaller evangelical cohort in New Hampshire, sure, but also because there's something about Ted Cruz's face that makes you want to rear back and slug him. Writing at Psychology Today, neurologist Richard E. Cytowic thinks he's figured out why: His face does not act like a normal face.

The degree to which people dislike Cruz is astonishing. Sure, his policies range from absurd to odious in the eyes of many, but his relatively robust support is proof that not everyone finds his words appalling. Indeed, even people within his own party in the Senate, people with whom he would appear to share ideological commonalities, can't stand him. One site even set out on a quest to confirm an unstated sexual rumor about Cruz's college days, and in the process inadvertently found that practically no one who's met him likes him. Cytowic says it's because when Cruz expresses emotion (or at least pretends to), his face doesn't move the way humans have been conditioned to expect:

"I have rarely, if ever, seen a conventional smile from Senator Cruz. In a natural smile the corners of the mouth go up; these muscles we can control voluntarily as well. But muscles circling the eyes are involuntary only; they make the eyes narrow, forming crow’s feet at the outside corners. Even the Mona Lisa’s smile shows this... No matter the emotional coloring of Senator Cruz’s outward rhetoric, his mouth typically tightens into the same straight line. If it deviates from this, the corners of his mouth bend down, not upwards. The outside of his eyebrows bend down, too, when he emotes, something so atypical that it disturbs me."

Downturned expressions, he continues, typically signal to observers contempt or distrust, not unlike what we see in "resting bitch face." Humans, having lived as long as we have, became expert face-readers hundreds of thousands of years ago, as being able to tell friend from foe was essential to survival. It's not nearly as essential nowadays, but our brains haven't changed all that much. Seeing someone convey negative emotions (especially when they're trying not to) makes us subconsciously want to back away.

The now-conventional wisdom that John F. Kennedy bested Nixon in their 1960 debate because he looked better on television is largely overstated, but people nevertheless would prefer candidates they find easy to look at. Until Ted Cruz can find a credible body language coach, that probably won't be him.