While every person has their own individual “O-Face,” the expressions human beings make during orgasm have long been believed to share universal characteristics. But a new research study published this week in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and carried out by psychologists at the University of Glasgow in Scotland as well as other institutions in Europe, has discovered that the conventional wisdom about O-Faces is incorrect.
The facial expression you make during orgasm depends on the culture in which you were raised, the researchers found, after studying 3,600 facial expressions, and the reactions to those expressions by 40 different observers—20 from Western cultures, 20 from East Asian cultures, according to an account of the study published by Inverse.
The study also examined whether, as previous studies have claimed to show, facial expressions made during the intense pleasure of orgasm were identical to those displayed during painful experiences. The earlier findings have been puzzling, because while psychologists believe that facial expressions are important aspects of human communication, if expressions indicating pain and pleasure are the same, effective communication of “social messages” through those facial movements would appear to be difficult, to say the least.
But the study found just the opposite, as Newsweek reported. Not only do pained expressions differ from “orgasm faces,” but the researchers found that pain is expressed facially the same way in different cultures—but orgasms look different.
The study used advanced machine-learning computer technology to generate animated images of thousands of facial expressions The observers in the study were then asked to rate on a scale of “very strong” to “very weak,” how powerfully each expression communicated pain, or orgasm. Expressions that the observers could not put into either category were dismissed as “other.”
For observers from Western cultures, orgasm faces were represented by wide-open eyes and an open mouth, according to the study. But for the East Asian observers taking part in the study, orgasm was marked by smiling, with closed eyes.
Facial expressions representing pain, however, were identified by both Easterners and Westerners as “including brow lowering, cheek raising, nose wrinkling, and mouth stretching,” the study’s authors wrote.
Im both cultures, however, pain was represented by inward, contracted movements of the facial muscles, while orgasm was marked by outward, expansive facial muscle actions.
“Such contrasting face movements are therefore prime candidates for communicating these different affective states to others and to influence their behavior—for example, eliciting help in the case of pain or indicating completion of a sexual act in orgasm,” the researchers wrote.
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