AUTHOR=Carbon Claus-Christian 

TITLE=Wearing Face Masks Strongly Confuses Counterparts in Reading Emotions

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=11

YEAR=2020

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.566886

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2020.566886

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=<p>Wearing face masks is one of the essential means to prevent the transmission of certain respiratory diseases such as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Although acceptance of such masks is increasing in the Western hemisphere, many people feel that social interaction is affected by wearing a mask. In the present experiment, we tested the impact of face masks on the readability of emotions. The participants (<italic>N</italic> = 41, calculated by an <italic>a priori</italic> power test; random sample; healthy persons of different ages, 18–87 years) assessed the emotional expressions displayed by 12 different faces. Each face was randomly presented with six different expressions (<italic>angry</italic>, <italic>disgusted</italic>, <italic>fearful</italic>, <italic>happy</italic>, <italic>neutral</italic>, and <italic>sad</italic>) while being fully visible or partly covered by a face mask. Lower accuracy and lower confidence in one’s own assessment of the displayed emotions indicate that emotional reading was strongly irritated by the presence of a mask. We further detected specific confusion patterns, mostly pronounced in the case of misinterpreting disgusted faces as being angry plus assessing many other emotions (e.g., <italic>happy</italic>, <italic>sad</italic>, and <italic>angry</italic>) as neutral. We discuss compensatory actions that can keep social interaction effective (e.g., body language, gesture, and verbal communication), even when relevant visual information is crucially reduced.</p>