If you want a revolting face, here is the good doctor.
Posted on 02/08/2016 10:57:30 AM PST by TigerClaws
It’s hard to look at Ted Cruz’s face. He’s a brilliant orator with a sharp legal mind. But his expression unsettles me. I know my reaction is visceral and automatic, but as a neurologist it is my business to notice things out of the ordinary and probe them. The Senator’s atypical expressions leave me uneasy.
Before I say why, note how many colleagues and former associates "loathe" him. A Bush alumnus told The New York Times' Frank Bruni, “Why do people take such an instant dislike to Ted Cruz? It just saves time.†Former Senate Majority leader Bob Dole says, "Nobody likes him," while Rep. Peter King sees "malice." According to The Washington Post, screenwriter Craig Mazin, Cruz's former Princeton roommate, has called him a "huge asshole," and "creepy." He's Tweeted, "Getting emails blaming me for not smothering Ted Cruz in his sleep in 1988." The distaste for Cruz even extends beyond the U.S.: Germans say Backpfeifengesicht, meaning a face in need of a good punch.
Humans learn to read faces from the day they are born. Infants readily respond to smiles. They imitate others’ facial expressions and gestures. During the first months of life, brain activity readings trace the development of their body maps. These brain maps allow an infant to recognized similarities between self and other—the foundation on which all social cognition rests, especially trust.
Our stone–age ancestors learned to read faces and rapidly tell friend from foe. While we live in a far different environment, we still possess the same stone–age brain as our distant relatives. Like them, we judge instantly. Automatically and more quickly than conscious reflection could manage, we weigh whether we like a new face or dislike the person behind it. Our social circuits, which are largely emotional, tell us whether to trust a person or not. Given a million years of practice, our brains are good at this.
Senator Cruz’s countenance doesn’t shift the way I expect typical faces to move. Human faces can’t help but broadcast what we feel, what we may be thinking, and even what we may intend. Many animals likewise broadcast what’s happening in their heads, as Charles Darwin illustrated at length in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.
Skill in reading faces is so fundamental to our species that 54 facial muscles orchestrate its endless nuances, which others read like a book just as we read them. Only some of these many facial muscles are under voluntary control, which is one reason it is so hard to maintain a poker face or counterfeit a smile.
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. The eyes give away one’s game and let us tell forged from genuine smiles. Grandma may have told you to put on a happy face, but you can’t if it isn’t heartfelt.
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. Typically a person’s eyebrows arch up, as does the corrugator muscle that furrow the forehead. What is such a downturned face signaling?
Downturned expressions usually signal disagreeableness or disgust. But I honestly don’t know because such an expression is rare in the context of public presentations that are meant to win people over. He may well be unaware that the message of his body language is incongruent with his words.
And then there is that open “O†of the Senator’s mouth that photos capture over and over. I don’t know what to make of it. But he makes it when he overtly emotes—shows us as well as tells us that he is determined, irritated, or above it all—whereas speakers who are angry, indignant, or rhetorically displeased push their mouth forward in a pout. He doesn’t. Google “Ted Cruz smiling,†and judge for yourself. For the record I am not a Democrat. I’m at a loss to verbalize what unsettles me so when I watch the freshman senator. But it leaves me cold.
It's just part of the lamestream media's Let's Piss On Cruz Week™.
Oh good grief.
Lots of creepy people have done great things.
If you want a revolting face, here is the good doctor.
I worry about that in the general if Cruz wins the nomination: he’s right on all the issues but about as good a campaign speaker and as telegenic as a flounder on ice.
Wasn’t this article first published in Voodoo Journal?
Maybe we should give him a phrenologic exam too.
I wonder how pretty Washington, Jefferson or Lincoln’s smiles were?
I also wonder how different the country would be today if the founders were picked on the pleasantness of their appearance.
What do they say about Hilary’s expressions? Angelic? Truthfulness? Caring? Understanding? What you expect from liberal snobs from a rag like that. Cruz can make all the faces he wants, he is still the only candidate I have an trust in to do what he promises. The more these snobs and current elitist politicians hate him the more I like him.
Truman Capote?
Sort of reminds me of Curly on the three stooges. Only less intelligent and less funny.
Psychology = Quackery and I'm not a Scientologist
That is the answer. Cruz has control over his emotions because he is governed by reason. It's a sign of sobriety and composure to a degree that most people aren't accustomed to.
Not being sold out for any of them yet, I find this interesting. Something unsettles me about his face as well. Can’t quite figure it out. What people communicate in thier facial expressions is important. Cruz looks fierce by nature. Smiling doesn’t seem to be natural or easy for him. I’m not sure what I think about that yet.
Lincoln win today? TV and women voters? Sadly he likely would not win today.
He was widely derided in the south as a monkey, Jew, Negro blood, etc.
Vapid line of reasoning..
As Sherlock Holmes instructs us:
The most repellent man of my acquaintance is a philanthropist; The most winning woman poisoned three little children.
I’m not sure what it is either. He just doesn’t seem like a guy you’d have a beer with or want to be around at all.
SCOTUS is the ideal gig for him. Let him destroy the liberals on the court for 40 years.
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