CN VII (Facial Nerve)
The portion of the facial nerve that controls facial expression is numbed in us, giving that dead emotionaless staire many will interprete however they please, but usually has hostile or angry.
I keep the same face always and noticed one of my former employers in security in hawaii always thought I was angry, but then his younger son told me a story of how armed gunmen invaded their nearby farm coming after them, and they decided it was fearful.... I know my face didn't change one bit. They were projecting, I was just in a analytical mode taking in the data set presented and playing scenerios and looking for solutions. So for everyone it is completely subjective, they paint our face however they want, but it isn't usually cheerful.
Good news is the mkst romantic character in literature that women adore is also a INTJ, so this suggests once people get to know us they really like us.
If you are not a INTJ, you may just as of late been thinking in a mode that requires more introspection and more strategic depth and logic, and your face freezes without you noticing, and people see this and read into it whatever they want, usually negatively at first.
I gace up in my 20s realizing I just intimidate people, especially women and just give them a wide berth and sometimes even cross a street if I see a very expressionable person walking up ahead because I don't want to deal with the glance when walking by deep in thought. I've also skipped elevators too out of politeness if it opens up and people catch site of my face and look at it momentarily and stop talking for a second. It's a biological prejudice, they rely on thinking modes where facial expressions dominate in communication.
As a interesting tidbit of History, there is a old icon of Jesus people interprete as either angry or happy, they project whatever they feel on the whole image when one half is one way, and the other half another:
Christ Pantocrator, from St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai, Egypt. 6th century.
Alot has historically been written on it. People interpete whatever they want from this static image.
