You're Sick, We Can See It All Over Your Face

By Carl Engelking
Jan 3, 2018 10:12 PMMay 21, 2019 5:44 PM
F3.large
A composite, layered image of 16 individuals (eight women) photographed twice in a cross-over design. These photos average the facial features of all 16 people into a single face. Can you tell which person is sick? A or B? (Answer at the bottom of this article. (Credit: Axelsson et al)

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Humans seem to possess an uncanny ability to read sickness on others’ faces, even in the earliest stages of an infection.

No kidding, you might say. Who couldn’t pick out a poor soul who’s been in the throes of the flu, red nose and all? But our ability to detect sickness is far more sensitive than that, according to a study by John Axelsson and his team from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. Our face-assessing abilities are, perhaps, so sensitive, that we might even detect signs of sickness in another person’s face long before they know they’re sick.

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