A study carried out in the US by psychologist David Havas and colleagues from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Arizona State University and the University of Chicago has had UK newspapers crying out that Botox injections will cause friendships to fail. The study’s conclusions suggest that using Botox procedures to effectively “freeze” the muscles that cause lined foreheads and crow’s feet will make users’ faces respond more slowly to bad news, giving the impression that they are indifferent or lacking in sympathy. Yet according to leading UK health website the study may be flawed and its conclusions should not give consumers cause to worry that Botox will destroy their relationships.
The study consisted of recruiting 41 women from cosmetic surgery clinics to participate in a test that involved reading 60 sentences on a computer screen. The women, who received $50 towards the cost of their procedures as compensation, took two tests–one just before their Botox treatment, and the second two weeks afterwards. Both times they read 20 happy, 20 sad and 20 angry sentences, pressing a key on the keyboard to indicate when they had finished reading each sentence.
Analytical techniques such as regression analysis were used to cancel out the effects the position of the questions in the tests, the emotions they were designed to express, and possible anxiety about the Botox procedures. The overall result of the study was the finding that although the time for reading the happy sentences remained unchanged, participants took approximately 0.2 to 0.3 seconds longer to read the sad and angry sentences after their Botox treatments. Drawing on earlier research on both animals and humans, the study’s conclusion was that Botox’s paralysing effect on facial muscles was hindering emotional processing, particularly if the paralysed muscles were the ones usually used to express the emotion in question.
NHS commenters have pointed to several flaws in the study, including the small size of the sample and the fact that previous studies have not shown for certain that reading time is an indicator of the effectiveness of emotional processing. In addition, no research was done to assess the popularity and/or sociability of the study participants, or to independently assess their facial expressions as they read the questions. It seems likely, therefore, that UK newspapers were jumping to unwarranted conclusions when they deduced that Botox use could ruin friendships.
