A face reads as intimidating when it sends dominance signals: a chin tipped down, low brows, no smile, and a gaze that does not let go. You may be doing all four without meaning to. Undo them, and the same face reads differently.
The four signals
- Chin down. A neutral face tilted down 10° was rated far more dominant than the same face held level, because the tilt makes level brows look lowered and V-shaped (Witkower & Tracy 2019).
- Eyes that hold. The tilt reads as dominant and angry only with a direct gaze (Toscano, Schubert & Giessner 2018). Viewers found about 3 seconds of eye contact the most comfortable; a hold past that is felt (Binetti et al. 2016).
- Low brows. They read as angry and dominant (Vernon et al. 2014).
- No smile. A smile edited onto a fighter’s photo made him look less hostile and less physically dominant (Kraus & Chen 2013), and broad smiles cut perceived dominance (Li et al. 2021).
What to do
- Bring your chin level, within 5°.
- Smile so that it shows, and let it build over half a second to a second. In a mock job interview, a smile that built and faded slowly was rated higher than the same smile switched on fast, which did no better than no smile (Krumhuber et al. 2009).
- Keep your brows at their resting height or higher.
- Break eye contact about every 3 seconds, to the side.
Practise it live
Open How I Land and choose “approachable” after “Be seen as”. Your camera shows your face with the look drawn on it, and one instruction at a time tells you what to move. When it fits, hold it for five seconds to remember the position.
Free. Nothing is recorded, stored or sent.
For the opposite, on purpose: how to look intimidating.