Wearing Face Masks Strongly Confuses Counterparts in Reading Emotions

• Published in: Frontiers in psychology Vol. 11; p. 566886
• Main Author: Carbon, Claus-Christian
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A 25-09-2020
• Subjects: accuracy; confusion; COVID-19; emotion; face masks; pandemic; Psychology
• ISSN: 1664-1078; 1664-1078
• DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.566886

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 (
N
= 41, calculated by an
a priori
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 (
angry
,
disgusted
,
fearful
,
happy
,
neutral
, and
sad
) 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.,
happy
,
sad
, and
angry
) 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.