According to the familiar axiom, the eyes are the window to the soul. However, wearing masks to prevent the spread of viruses such as COVID-19 involves obscuring a large portion of the face. Do the eyes carry sufficient information to allow for the accurate perception of emotions in dynamic expressions obscured by masks? What about the perception of the meanings of specific smiles? We addressed these questions in two studies. In the first, participants saw dynamic expressions of happiness, disgust, anger, and surprise that were covered by N95, surgical, or cloth masks or were uncovered and rated the extent to which the expressions conveyed each of the same four emotions. Across conditions, participants perceived significantly lower levels of the expressed (target) emotion in masked faces, and this was particularly true for expressions composed of more facial action in the lower part of the face. Higher levels of other (non-target) emotions were also perceived in masked expressions. In the second study, participants rated the extent to which three categories of smiles (reward, affiliation, and dominance) conveyed positive feelings, reassurance, and superiority, respectively. Masked smiles communicated less of the target signal than unmasked smiles, but not more of other possible signals. The present work extends recent studies of the effects of masked faces on the perception of emotion in its novel use of dynamic facial expressions (as opposed to still images) and the investigation of different types of smiles. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-021-00097-z.

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According to the familiar axiom, the eyes are the window to the soul. However, wearing masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19 involves occluding a large portion of the face. Do the eyes carry all of the information we need to perceive each other’s emotions? We addressed this question in two studies. In the first, 162 Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) workers saw videos of human faces displaying expressions of happiness, disgust, anger, and surprise that were fully visible or covered by N95, surgical, or cloth masks and rated the extent to which the expressions conveyed each of the four emotions. Across mask conditions, participants perceived significantly lower levels of the expressed (target) emotion and this was particularly true for expressions composed of greater facial action in the lower part of the faces. Furthermore, higher levels of other (non-target) emotions were perceived in masked compared to visible faces. In the second study, 60 MTurk workers rated the extent to which three types of smiles (reward, affiliation, and dominance smiles), either visible or masked, conveyed positive feelings, reassurance, and superiority. They reported that masked smiles communicated less of the target signal than visible faces, but not more of other possible signals. Political attitudes were not systematically associated with disruptions in the processing of facial expression caused by masking the face.

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