The effects of face coverings, own-ethnicity biases, and attitudes on emotion recognition

Abstract

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, face coverings were introduced as a safety measure in certain environments in England and some research suggests that they can affect emotion recognition. Factors such as own-ethnicity bias (e.g. whether people perceiving and expressing emotions are of the same ethnicity) and social biases are also known to influence emotion recognition. However, it is unclear whether these factors interact with face coverings to affect emotion recognition. Therefore, this study examined the effects of face coverings, own-ethnicity biases, and attitudes on emotion recognition accuracy. In this study, 131 participants viewed masked and unmasked emotional faces varying in ethnicity and completed a questionnaire on their attitudes towards face masks. We found that emotion recognition was associated with masks and attitudes: accuracy was lower in masked than unmasked conditions and attitudes towards masks Inside and Outside were associated with emotion recognition. However, a match between perceiver and stimulus ethnicity did not have a significant effect on emotion recognition. Ultimately, our results suggest that masks, and negative attitudes towards them, were associated with poorer emotion recognition. Future research should explore different mask-wearing behaviours and possible in-group/out-group biases and their interaction with other social cues (e.g. in-group biases).

Emotional face recognition when a colored mask is worn: a cross-sectional study

“…First, analysis of ratings on Scales 2, 3 and 4 revealed that faces expressing sadness were perceived of more as expressing sadness (Scales 2 and 3) or as being more negative (Scale 4) in the unmasked condition than in the pink and red mask conditions for Scale 3, and whatever the color of the mask for Scales 2 and 4. This particular sensitivity of sadness recognition to the presence of a mask is congruent with some previous studies suggesting a particular decrease in sad face recognition with a mask 19 , 20 , 22 , 26 . More specifically, after disgust (not used in the present study), sadness appears to have been the expression most impacted in several studies performed in adults 20 , 22 .…”

“…This particular sensitivity of sadness recognition to the presence of a mask is congruent with some previous studies suggesting a particular decrease in sad face recognition with a mask 19 , 20 , 22 , 26 . More specifically, after disgust (not used in the present study), sadness appears to have been the expression most impacted in several studies performed in adults 20 , 22 . However, this result is to be contrasted with those reported by Ruba and Pollak (2020) 25 or obtained before the mask issue arose 64 , which suggest that sad expressions are better processed by focusing on the upper part of the face.…”

“…Second, results for Scales 1 and 3 revealed a stronger categorization of fearful faces when unmasked, compared with some colored masked conditions. This indicates that the processing of fearful expressions is sensitive to mask wearing, as shown in some studies 20,22,26 but not others 19,25 . Once again, these results may be related to the characteristic pattern of fear expression, involving both upper and lower face AUs.…”

“…Results of recent studies conducted among adults generally indicate that when faces are masked versus unmasked, EFE recognition is less accurate (i.e. more confusion with other emotions) and emotional intensity is less well perceived [19][20][21][22][23][24] . However, these mask effects vary according to the emotion and may even be entirely absent.…”

The influence of face mask on social spaces depends on the behavioral immune system

“…a face mask on social interactions was found to also alter facial emotion recognition (Carbon, 2020;Bani et al, 2021;Grundmann et al, 2021;Noyes et al, 2021;Cooper et al, 2022;Ramachandra and Longacre, 2022), in adults as in young children (Gori et al, 2021). However, in all these studies the effect of individual characteristics on the regulation of social spaces when interacting with people wearing a face mask was not taken into account.…”