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

Michael Christian Leitner; Verena Meurer; Florian Hutzler; Sarah Schuster; Stefan Hawelka

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.933438

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

Front Psychol. 2022 Dec 22:13:933438. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.933438. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Michael Christian Leitner^{1

2

3}, Verena Meurer^{2

3}, Florian Hutzler^{2

3}, Sarah Schuster^{2

3}, Stefan Hawelka^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Salzburg University of Applied Sciences, Salzburg, Austria.
² Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience (CCNS), University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria.
³ Department of Psychology, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria.

Abstract

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 video sequences of faces. 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.

Keywords: COVID-19; basic emotions; emotion perception; face masks; interpersonal communication; social interaction; video stimulus.