The Effect of Surgical Masks on the Featural and Configural Processing of Emotions

Abstract

From the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of surgical masks became widespread. However, they occlude an important part of the face and make it difficult to decode and interpret other people’s emotions. To clarify the effect of surgical masks on configural and featural processing, participants completed a facial emotion recognition task to discriminate between happy, sad, angry, and neutral faces. Stimuli included fully visible faces, masked faces, and a cropped photo of the eyes or mouth region. Occlusion due to the surgical mask affects emotion recognition for sadness, anger, and neutral faces, although no significative differences were found in happiness recognition. Our findings suggest that happiness is recognized predominantly via featural processing.

Mapping the perception-space of facial expressions in the era of face masks

“…The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic and the introduction of face masks as a protective device to limit the spread of the infection has raised considerable interest in the context of studies on face processing, as masks made it impossible to view the entire lower half of the face. Several studies conducted after the beginning of the pandemic (and the use of face masks) have investigated potential patterns in the recognition of emotions by comparing conditions in which the faces were entirely visible with conditions in which the faces were covered by a mask ( Carbon, 2020 ; Grundmann et al, 2020 ; Ruba and Pollak, 2020 ; Bani et al, 2021 ; Calbi et al, 2021 ; Carbon and Serrano, 2021 ; Fitousi et al, 2021 ; Gori et al, 2021 ; Grahlow et al, 2021 ; Kang et al, 2021 ; Lau, 2021 ; Marini et al, 2021 ; Noyes et al, 2021 ; Pazhoohi et al, 2021 ; Sheldon et al, 2021 ; Ziccardi et al, 2021 ; Carbon et al, 2022 ; Grenville and Dwyer, 2022 ; Kastendieck et al, 2022 ; Kim et al, 2022 ; Langbehn et al, 2022 ; Maiorana et al, 2022 ; McCrackin et al, 2022 ; Parada-Fernández et al, 2022 ; Schneider et al, 2022 ; Tsantani et al, 2022 ). Previous studies had also investigated the ability to extract affective meaning from only partially visible faces, using different occlusion methods such as the following: presenting stimuli covered by hats, scarves, sunglasses, niqabs, or censoring black bars; degrading the quality of sections of the presented image; or progressively increasing the visual information available ( Kret and de Gelder, 2012 ; Calvo and Fernández-Martín, 2013 ; Calvo et al, 2014 ; Wegrzyn et al, 2017 ; Kret and Fischer, 2018 ; Liedtke et al, 2018 ; Ruba and Pollak, 2020 ; Kret et al, 2021 ; Noyes et al, 2021 ; Kim et al, 2022 ).…”

“…So far, almost all of the studies conducted have investigated the perception and recognition of intense facial expressions using static images as stimuli ( Carbon, 2020 ; Grundmann et al, 2020 ; Ruba and Pollak, 2020 ; Calbi et al, 2021 ; Carbon and Serrano, 2021 ; Fitousi et al, 2021 ; Grahlow et al, 2021 ; Kang et al, 2021 ; Lau, 2021 ; Marini et al, 2021 ; Noyes et al, 2021 ; Pazhoohi et al, 2021 ; Ziccardi et al, 2021 ; Carbon et al, 2022 ; Grenville and Dwyer, 2022 ; Kastendieck et al, 2022 ; Kim et al, 2022 ; Langbehn et al, 2022 ; Maiorana et al, 2022 ; McCrackin et al, 2022 ; Parada-Fernández et al, 2022 ; Schneider et al, 2022 ; Tsantani et al, 2022 ). The few exceptions to this have investigated the recognition of subtle ( Bani et al, 2021 ; Gori et al, 2021 ; Sheldon et al, 2021 ) and ambiguous/blended ( Wegrzyn et al, 2015 ) expressions using static pictures or short video clips as dynamic stimuli ( Kastendieck et al, 2022 ; Langbehn et al, 2022 ).…”

“…The lack of in-depth knowledge regarding how the presence of face masks affects the perception of emotions’ intensity may be due to the fact that the majority of studies conducted so far have employed tasks requiring participants to assess a person’s emotional state from a limited list of given emotions ( Kret and Fischer, 2018 ; Liedtke et al, 2018 ; Carbon, 2020 ; Grundmann et al, 2020 ; Ruba and Pollak, 2020 ; Bani et al, 2021 ; Calbi et al, 2021 ; Carbon and Serrano, 2021 ; Gori et al, 2021 ; Grahlow et al, 2021 ; Kang et al, 2021 ; Marini et al, 2021 ; Noyes et al, 2021 ; Pazhoohi et al, 2021 ; Ziccardi et al, 2021 ; Carbon et al, 2022 ; Grenville and Dwyer, 2022 ; Kim et al, 2022 ; Maiorana et al, 2022 ; McCrackin et al, 2022 ; Parada-Fernández et al, 2022 ; Schneider et al, 2022 ). Although such methods allow one to observe whether participants confuse the facial expressions of one emotion with another unintended one, they do not provide any information regarding the perception of the intensity of the emotion identified.…”

“…To date, most published studies have chosen to select stimuli representing only a limited variety of emotions (a range of three to four emotions) ( Kret and Fischer, 2018 ; Liedtke et al, 2018 ; Ruba and Pollak, 2020 ; Bani et al, 2021 ; Calbi et al, 2021 ; Fitousi et al, 2021 ; Lau, 2021 ; Marini et al, 2021 ; Kastendieck et al, 2022 ; Maiorana et al, 2022 ; Parada-Fernández et al, 2022 ; Schneider et al, 2022 ). In the present study, we therefore decided to assess recognition of all the six basic emotions.…”

“…Interestingly, the valence of the emotions selected in these previous studies has not always been evenly represented. For example, in some studies, happiness has been the only emotion with positive valence ( Kret and Fischer, 2018 ; Liedtke et al, 2018 ; Bani et al, 2021 ; Marini et al, 2021 ; Maiorana et al, 2022 ; Schneider et al, 2022 ). In experiments presenting participants with a forced-choice task, this has occasionally created a real risk of registering a ceiling effect, as observed in Kastendieck et al (2022) .…”