This is neither science nor pseudo-science, I'm not claiming any degree of rigor. It's nothing more than my own thoughts and observations, and as mentioned downthread, I don't think the research exists to prove or disprove what I'm saying. Perhaps I should have said "IMO" and "I don't have data but..." in my comment, and I do say that a lot. On the other hand, I want to avoid turning this into a kind of tic that I'm seeing increasingly often among technically minded peers, as if we have to apologize for airing any ideas or observations that we've failed to back up with data.

And when I was writing this, what I had in mind was my parents very-much-white Russian cohort, born around WW2, whose faces IMO tend to reflect the anxiety and exhaustion that accompanied most of their lives.

As for the "white" POV, whether or not there is cultural diversity in both the expression of and interpretation of emotions, and especially basic emotions, is currently an intensely researched and AFAIK unsettled question. So when you say that it's "impossible to make broad statements like these", I think the jury is still out.

> This is total pseudo-science, like a modern phrenology.

How do we know? I haven't heard of any studies that compare people's first impressions against the person's actual disposition or personality.

For example, this article pointed out that honesty was a trait people tend to read from faces, but it didn't ask the question: are people's reading accurate? It assumes that an honest-looking face has no bearing on a person's actual integrity, but maybe it does. We haven't actually measured.

To be clear: I'm not trying to agree or disagree with you, just point out that we don't have any strong evidence either way. As far as I know both positions are unsupported scientifically.