The benefits of a poker face are widely extolled in poker but also in life. Poker faces help in cards, of course, but also in negotiations and dealings around the conference room table when the stakes are high. And poker faces are widely supposed to come in handy when asking for something from the boss—like a raise, for instance.

But a recent study (Kavanagh et al., 2024) looked hard at poker faces and compared them with more expressive ones, and found—wait for it—that we trust expressive faces more than less expressive ones. As I’ve been saying for a long time, don’t let your face go blank when you are speaking, even if adrenaline pushes you in that direction, because you’re trying to make a........

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