What to do
- Lower your chin about 10°. Anywhere from 8° to 15° works.
- Keep your eyes on theirs without a break. With the eyes down, the same tilt reads as submissive.
- Do not raise your brows. Looking up from a lowered head pulls them up; keep them where they rest.
- Do not smile, and keep your lips closed.
- Do not scowl on purpose: lowered brows add open anger, and a weak scowl adds no dominance.
Be in the look when your eyes meet theirs: people settle on a face within about a tenth of a second (Willis & Todorov 2006; Todorov, Pakrashi & Oosterhof 2009).
Practise it live
Open How I Land and choose “intimidating” after “Be seen as”. Your camera shows your face with this 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.
Why it reads this way
- Intimidation is read from dominance. A neutral face tilted down 10° was rated far more dominant than the same face level, because the tilt makes level brows look lowered and V-shaped (Witkower & Tracy 2019). In a small-scale society in Nicaragua, most people picked the tilted face as the more dominant (Witkower et al. 2022).
- The tilt reads as dominant and angry only with a direct gaze; with the eyes down it reads as submissive and ashamed (Toscano, Schubert & Giessner 2018; Mignault & Chaudhuri 2003).
- With the brows hidden the effect vanished. Lowering them on purpose adds open anger instead (Witkower & Tracy 2019; Hess, Blairy & Kleck 2000).
- A smile edited onto a fighter’s photo made him look less hostile and less physically dominant (Kraus & Chen 2013).
- A lowered head without a smile signals dominance; a raised one with a smile, prestige (Witkower et al. 2020).
In the app, “Why” shows the target numbers and how each was built, with its sources.
Where the people you meet are from
- Nothing in this look changes by region: the two axes the looks rest on, warmth and dominance, were found again in all 11 world regions tested (Jones et al. 2021).
Good for
Competition, acting, a role that calls for it.
Guides
Chin up or chin down? What your head angle says, How to do the Kubrick stare, How to look less intimidating. All guides.
Other looks
Approachable, happy, open, confident, competent, trustworthy, calm, alert, mysterious. All ten on one page.