While face masks provide necessary protection against disease spread, they occlude the lower face parts (chin, mouth, nose) and consequently impair the ability to accurately perceive facial emotions. Here we examined how wearing face masks impacted making inferences about emotional states of others (i.e., affective theory of mind; Experiment 1) and sharing of emotions with others (i.e., affective empathy; Experiment 2). We also investigated whether wearing transparent masks ameliorated the occlusion impact of opaque masks. Participants viewed emotional faces presented within matching positive (happy), negative (sad), or neutral contexts. The faces wore opaque masks, transparent masks, or no masks. In Experiment 1, participants rated the protagonists’ emotional valence and intensity. In Experiment 2, they indicated their empathy for the protagonist and the valence of their emotion. Wearing opaque masks impacted both affective theory of mind and affective empathy ratings. Compared to no masks, wearing opaque masks resulted in assumptions that the protagonist was feeling less intense and more neutral emotions. Wearing opaque masks also reduced positive empathy for the protagonist and resulted in more neutral shared valence ratings. Wearing transparent masks restored the affective theory of mind ratings but did not restore empathy ratings. Thus, wearing face masks impairs nonverbal social communication, with transparent masks able to restore some of the negative effects brought about by opaque masks. Implications for the theoretical understanding of socioemotional processing as well as for educational and professional settings are discussed.

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Emotional expressions can be recognized from the eye region alone. However, it remains unknown how reading emotions from the eyes impacts downstream abilities that build on basic emotion recognition, including understanding (i.e., affective theory of mind) and sharing of emotions (i.e., affective empathy). In three experiments we investigated how occluding the eye region of emotional faces impacted judgments of affective theory of mind and affective empathy. Participants viewed emotional faces with eye regions covered by opaque occluders, transparent occluders, or no occluders. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants reported the protagonists’ emotional valence and intensity. In Experiment 3, participants rated their own empathy and emotional valence for the protagonist. When eyes were occluded, protagonists were judged to feel more neutral and less intense emotion and were empathized with less. This provides one of the first direct links between eye region information and the complex socioemotional processes of inferring and sharing emotions.