What Cold Eyes Don’t See: The Neuroscience of Meanness and the Face You Just Made
Saturday, April 5, 2025.
Once upon a time, in a dimly lit room in Spain, a group of researchers invited undergrads to stare at human faces—angry, happy, scared, and blank.
As any introvert will tell you, this sounds like a worst-case party scenario. But this wasn’t hazing. This was science.
And what they found may help us understand why some people can watch your face twist in fear and feel absolutely... nothing.
Psychopathy Is a Spectrum. Meanness Is a Spike
In the universe of psychopathy, not all villains wear capes—or hockey masks. The triarchic model of psychopathy gives us three coordinates to navigate this murky terrain:
Boldness – Fearless, charming, confident. Often promoted.
Disinhibition – Impulsive, reckless, a chaos agent in skinny jeans.
Meanness – Cold, callous, emotionally blunted, and low in empathy. Likely to step over your broken heart on the way to the mirror.
While pop culture clings to the charismatic sociopath trope (see: every prestige drama in the last decade), science is busy dissecting how each of these traits uniquely scrambles our social software.
And now, thanks to a study in Biological Psychology, we know that meanness leaves a footprint in the brain within just 200 milliseconds of seeing a human face.
The Face Isn’t a Mirror. For the Mean, It’s Static
Using EEG—those cozy little brain hats full of electrodes—the researchers observed how 119 college students reacted to emotional expressions.
Not consciously, but neurally. Specifically, they tracked the N170 component, the brain’s early facial-recognition signal, which fires faster than your ex sends “u up?” texts.
In people with higher levels of meanness, this N170 signal was weaker across the board—not just for fear (which previous studies had already flagged), but also for anger, happiness, and even neutral expressions.
Translation: the emotionally cold don’t just fail to read fear—they tune out faces altogether.
But Wait—What About Boldness and Disinhibition?
Ah, the thrill-seekers and impulse-riders? They’re off the hook, at least for now.
The study found no significant N170 changes linked to boldness or disinhibition. Which means the guy who BASE jumps for likes or the woman who texts her ex while speeding—those aren’t necessarily the people who’ll fail to notice your facial pain. But the ones scoring high on meanness? They might.
As lead researcher Victoria Branchadell puts it, “This blunted neural processing of faces... suggests difficulties in the process of rapidly extracting and ‘putting together’ individual features of face stimuli.”
You know, like empathy, intimacy, or not scaring the bejeezus out of your coworkers.
Early Warning Signs in the Brain’s Reception Desk
Here’s what makes the finding juicy: the N170 kicks in before you even know you’ve seen a face.
It’s the brain’s concierge, deciding what kind of guest is at the door—threat? friend? barista who judges your coffee order?
That this signal is dampened in people high in meanness suggests a hardwired shortfall in recognizing that other people are, well, people—complete with feelings and furrowed brows.
And unlike fear-recognition deficits, which have been well-documented in psychopathy, this study shows that the meanness variety of psychopathy may involve a general breakdown in early emotional perception, not just selective insensitivity.
So, Are They Just Born Mean?
Not so fast. While these EEG patterns point to a biological marker, we’re still in chicken-or-egg territory. Is this early perceptual numbness a cause or consequence of living without emotional reciprocity?
The researchers wisely acknowledge that passively viewing images isn’t the same as navigating real-life emotion—like breaking up, raising a kid, or losing a pet. Future research will need to connect these early perceptual deficits to actual behavior.
But one thing is clear: people with high levels of meanness may be neurologically under-equipped to “read the room”—a fact that might explain more about the world than we care to admit.
The Gender Plot Twist
Here’s a kicker for your cocktail party conversations: men in the study showed stronger N170 responses than women. And yet—they also scored higher in meanness.
So we can’t say this brain pattern is just a gender issue.
Even when controlling for sex, the link between meanness and neural flatness held steady. That’s science talk for “it’s not just a guy thing.”
Implications: Can We Spot Meanness Early?
Let’s imagine for a moment—pure sci-fi, but still—what if these EEG signals became part of early psych assessments?
What if educators, therapists, or even couples counselors could use neurofeedback to identify (and maybe even train) emotional recognition skills in people who fall high on the meanness scale?
It’s not Minority Report, exactly. But it’s close enough to spark both hope and ethical handwringing.
As Branchadell explains, “We would like to formally test whether such psychophysiological and behavioral measures might be viable candidates to be incorporated in neuroclinical assessments.”
So What Does It All Mean for the Rest of Us?
If someone in your life consistently fails to respond to your emotions—your joy, your anger, your quiet sadness—there’s now a faint brainwave trail suggesting they may not just be inconsiderate. They may be neurologically indifferent.
This doesn’t mean they’re doomed or dangerous.
But it might mean that talk therapy alone won't cut it—especially if the very neurons responsible for facial empathy don’t light up when they see your frown.
We’ve long known that meanness hurts. Now, thanks to a flicker of electricity 170 milliseconds after a face appears, we know it runs deeper than personality—it starts in perception.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Branchadell, V., Segarra, P., Poy, R., Moltó, J., & Ribes-Guardiola, P. (2024). Meanness and deficits in facial affect processing: Evidence from the N170. Biological Psychology. https://doi.org/[placeholder]
Patrick, C. J., Fowles, D. C., & Krueger, R. F. (2009). Triarchic conceptualization of psychopathy: Developmental origins of disinhibition, boldness, and meanness. Development and Psychopathology, 21(3), 913–938. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579409000492
Viding, E., & McCrory, E. J. (2019). Towards understanding atypical social affiliation in psychopathy. The Lancet Psychiatry, 6(5), 437–444. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(19)30085-