Smiling versus resting B**ch face: patients’ evaluations of male and female healthcare providers’ facial expressions

ABSTRACT Resting b**ch face (RBF) is described as an unintentional angry facial expression that is evaluated negatively and usually attributed to women. A 2 (smiling/RBF) x 2 (female/male provider) online experiment, guided by expectancy violations theory, investigated whether U.S. adults’ perceptions of a healthcare provider, medical care quality, and likelihood to make another appointment would be impacted by the provider’s facial expression and sex. Results indicated that RBF was an expectancy violation resulting in decreased liking and perceptions of care quality. The female provider with RBF was evaluated more negatively than the smiling female provider and the male provider with RBF on liking, caring, medical care quality, and likelihood to make a future appointment. Additional findings are further discussed in the paper. Patients may hold biases toward providers based on their facial expressions and biological sex.