Small anecdote: I met my partner’s aunt for the first time in 2012. She was a difficult character who had been estranged from her sister (my MIL) for years and this was the grand reset (supposedly).
When I met her, I didn’t know that she had had botox and I remember feeling really freaked out that I couldn’t read her reaction to me. Her face had been so paralysed by the toxin she could barely even raise the corners of her mouth in a smile and it sent all my intuitions about reading other people and their emotions into a tailspin.
As it turned out, she didn’t like me at all – because I was young and at that point wrinkle- and grey hair free. Not friendship material for a woman that panicked about ageing, clearly.
I never, EVER want to be like her. She looked awful – her skin had that taut, waxy appearance that betrays unnatural treatment. Almost corpse-like.

Mary didn’t mention the burqa, perhaps intentionally, but I will.

“…given that paralysing our ability to mimic others’ expressions with Botox flattens or muddies emotional communication, it’s a reasonable bet that mediating it via technologies that attenuate, warp or simply conceal emotional signals…”

Yes, but this is no different from any other type of communication where people are not communicating face to face, so have no access to visual facial cues.

So, yet another problem created by technology, which surely can also be fixed by (more) technology: can we not ask Madonna’s plastic surgeon to also patch an OLED panel on the forehead, so she can flash up appropriate emojis as a substitute for the facial cues she can no longer generate?

Thinking of cancelling my subscription to Unherd cuz nobody had the balls to defend Kellie Jay Keen. Phony Cowards.

Maybe these phenomena will be a corrective to the delusions of #Empathy, which is, in my opinion, simply projection, in most cases. “My emotions are always the right ones, so, of course, other people have the same emotions as I do. I’m so empathetic!”

I thought that Botox was merely an Ulsterman’s pronunciation of bum cheeks?

Sharing a queue with the lags and their girlfriends in a courthouse recently I was struck at how many of the latter appeared to be full of botox and lip fillers. I suspect that the main drivers for the increased prevalence of these treatments are Love Island, and price.

Over and above all else, the favoured botox frozen look appears to be somewhere between sulky and stroppy.

Mary, thank you for this very interesting article. I have to admit that I am not surprised by the results of the New Scientist report, even though, only 10 women participated to the trial. More than any possible chemical and physical/visual effect, the perpetual search of self importance and eternal youth has something to do with the disappearance of empathy. Has anyone seen Sharon Stone’s selfie posted for her 65 birthday? Both dramatic and hilarious!

I’d be completely unable to cope under current circumstances if I lost the ability to raise my eyebrows.

I have never (I think) met anyone who has had Botox.
Is that because I am not form London or do I need to get out more?

I left subscribing to NS some time ago when I saw repeated instances of identity marxism gaining headway in content and advertising. When I wrote to the editor I received to response, so that was that.
Here, Harrington mentions a study group of “people” so I decided to go to the report, with no success. The bulk of the NS article is behind a paywall. The last readable line say 10 women so I don’t know if men are included. Also, different age cohorts do not appear to be mentioned – apart from one.

V interesting and further makes one aware of how much interpretation can be lost in just on-line dialogues such as that we daily have on UnHerd. Not much we can do about that other than be mindful something is probably being lost.

This needed an editor’s hand. Syntactically the second paragraph communicates that the women viewing photos were given the injections and hence the treatment made THEM less empathetic , but it was meant to communicate that 10 women viewed before and after photos of women who had the injections.

Post Covid I expected pretty much all market research to go back to face to face given the importance of body language and obvious.limitations of zoom in this refard. Over 50% remains online. Clients favouring cost/speed over deeper analysisdrawn from non-verbal sources. We are living ever more superficial lives with superficial data inputs. In a complex system that spells disaster.

The devil is in the detail. Having a had a little experience with MRI data analyses, I can say it’s not that simple and you would not want to believe everything you read about results from this kind of study.

I would like to propose the idea that this can actually work to help HSP. As someone who is on the spectrum for some reason my empathy of others emotions is so overwhelming Having had botox not for 10yrs. I can 100% say unfortunately when it wears off I can feel the intensity of emotions became too much again. The botox allows me to put distance between others emotions and my ability to take them on board. I certainly still feel empathy and emotions of others, it’s just not as intense. I cannot speak for neurotypcals. I already feel they are distanced from emotions even without botox, in a way I am unfortunately not. But I think this needs to be looked into medically to help balance out those people who feel too much.

First thing, to those thinking that empathy is overrated, it’s clearly not. It’s entwinned with facial expression status and belief systems. It’s part and parcel of fluid communication that, can when the parties are willing, adjust such ‘reactions’ to ‘others’. We can learn to get over ourselves!
Second; I can say, Absolute and YES to Botox effecting empathic perception and communication. That’s why the word empathy was used, not understanding. Establishing empathies allows for effective dialogue and a sense of being listened to.
From another angle; ideas regarding ‘Autism’ has been plagued by ideas of empathic response. In resent history has it been reasserted by experiment, that (by as far anything can be proven) that Autistic folk are not ‘disordered’, but have a been incorrectly judged by observers, by what is now know as the ‘Double Empathy’ Issue. I prefer, as one Autism advocate compared it to, ‘the Uncanny Valley’ of AI robotics, that leaves those relating to AI robots designed to emulate humans, with a sense of vague distrust and disconnection – a lack of empathy!
Ever related to someone with a palsy, or neurological damage to one side of their face? If you’re like me, it’s a novel and far from daily experience; I tend to curb my curiosity for difference and look to the unaffected side.

Mary, Mary, where are you Mary? It’s the reservation calling.

So people without facial lines are unable to read emotions in others? This article appears to have a single objective; to dehumanise people that have had Botox. Why, what is the point?

Naturally it’s aimed at all those air-headed and emotionless women that have the cheek to not age, fade and disappear quietly. Men have it too; I’ve had it and freely tell people. I don’t care what they think; my body.