Can you tell which face is healthy and which is sick?
A new study has revealed small changes in a person's face can give away that they're sick after a few seconds glance.
Researchers at Proceedings of the Royal Society B took photos of 16 people with "healthy" faces and then injected them with lipopolysaccharide - a molecule found on many pathogenic bacteria.
An immune response was triggered and the "after" photos taken two hours later, show the subtle face changes when the endotoxin symptoms set in.
The photo on the left shows the "healthy" face, with rosier lips, more colour in the face and less obvious under-eye bags.
In the "sick" picture, the entire face is paler, slightly puffy and the corner of the mouth droops, Gizmodo reported.
The images of the 16 faces were shown at random to 62 volunteers who were asked to determine whether each person looked sick or healthy.
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They were only allowed to view each photo for five seconds, but the volunteers correctly identified the sick person 81 per cent of the time.
“We can detect subtle cues related to the skin, eyes and mouth and we judge people as sick by those cues," co-writer of the study, John Axelsson from the Karolinska Institute, said.
He said the face is the primary source of “social information for communication," the Washington Post reported.
Each participant was paid almost $550 for being included in the study.
