The effect of masks on the recognition of facial expressions: A true-to-life study on the perception of basic emotions

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Verena Meurer¹  Florian Hutzler¹  Sarah Schuster¹  Stefan Hawelka¹  Michael Christian Leitner³ 

[1] Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience ,(CCNS), University of Salzburg;Department of Psychology, University of Salzburg;Salzburg University of Applied Sciences

关键词: Emotion Perception;    face masks;    social interaction;    interpersonal communication;    video stimulus;    Basic emotions;    COVID-19;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2022.933438

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Mouth-to-nose face masks became ubiquitous due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This ignited studies on the perception of emotions in masked faces. Most of these studies presented still images of an emotional face with a face mask digitally superimposed upon the nose-mouth region. A common finding of these studies is that smiles become less perceivable. The present study investigated the recognition of basic emotions in agitated faces (i.e., we video-taped facial expressions of emotions). We replicated much of the evidence gathered from presenting still images with digitally superimposed masks. We also unearthed fundamental differences in comparison to existing studies with regard to the perception of smile which is less impeded than previous studies implied.

【 授权许可】

CC BY