Face masks bolsters the characteristics from looking at a face even when facial expressions are impaired

Abstract

Face masks impact social interactions because emotion recognition is difficult due to face occlusion by the masks. But is this enough to draw conclusions that face masks causes negative social interactions? We investigated the impact of face masks on invariant characteristics, trait-like characteristics, and emotional expressions for faces with and without face masks. Participants completed an online survey and rated masked and no-masked faces. The same face was only seen with or without a mask throughout the survey. According to the results, when compared to no-masked faces, participants faced difficulties rating emotional expressions for masked faces. Some expressions appeared less intense when viewed with facemasks. Other characteristics received better ratings when the face was shown with masks. Post-hoc modelling revealed that ratings for masked faces could also predict ratings for no-masked faces, vice versa. This suggested that some aspects such as emotional expressions, were negatively impeded by face masks. However, not all aspects derived from viewing the face were affected the same way. This was because participants favored other characteristics for masked faces than for no-masked faces. Therefore, face masks did not necessarily impact social interactions negatively as only certain characteristics (i.e., emotional expressions) weredifficult to evaluate. Future directions were proposed to expand the research.