Face masks inhibit facial cues for approachability and trustworthiness: an eyetracking study

Abstract

Wearing face masks during the Covid-19 pandemic has undeniable benefits from our health perspective. However, the interpersonal costs on social interactions may have been underappreciated. Because masks obscure critical facial regions signaling approach/avoidance intent and social trust, this implies that facial inference of approachability and trustworthiness may be severely discounted. Here, in our eyetracking experiment, we show that people judged masked faces as less approachable and trustworthy. Further analyses showed that the attention directed towards the eye region relative to the mouth region mediated the effect on approachability, but not on trustworthiness. This is because for masked faces, with the mouth region obscured, visual attention is then automatically diverted away from the mouth and towards the eye region, which is an undiagnostic cue for judging a target’s approachability. Together, these findings support that mask-wearing inhibits the critical facial cues needed for social judgements.

Do masks cover more than just a face? A study on how facemasks affect the perception of emotional expressions according to their degree of intensity

“…The mask, reducing the available information in the lower part of the face, might lead the participants to focus more on the upper part of the face (Barrick et al, 2021; Freud et al, 2020), which would be ineffective in recognizing these emotions. These interpretations are congruent with eye movements and gaze tracking studies showing increased focalization duration and number of fixations on the upper part of masked faces compared to unmasked faces, during tasks assessing judgments of trustworthiness and approachability (Bylianto & Chan, 2022) or during facial identity recognition tasks (Chen et al, 2023; DeBolt & Oakes, 2023; Hsiao et al, 2022). However, to our knowledge, no study using this methodology has been conducted in order to explore more objectively the changes of strategies involved in recognizing the emotions of faces wearing a mask.…”

Child and Adult Faces: Facial Mimicry and Emotion Perception Are Influenced by the Interaction of Target Age and Face Masks

“…However, it is possible that, with ongoing mask exposure, people may learn to better cope with masks. This notion is supported by eye-tracking data that suggests shifts in attention to different facial areas when the mask is present ( 26 ; 27 ). This is particularly interesting as we can speculate that, with more time into the pandemic or mask-wearing practices in general, less pronounced mask effects on emotional mimicry may be expected as perceivers may shift their attention to the eye region.…”

Masks wearing off: Changing effects of face masks on trustworthiness over time

“…Rather, masks reduced the difference between high and low trustworthy faces, with low trustworthy faces increasing and high trustworthy faces decreasing in perceived trustworthiness. By obstructing cues normally used to judge trustworthiness and diverting attention to less diagnostic facial cues ( Bylianto & Chan, 2022 ), high and low trustworthy faces appear more similar in trustworthiness. Even for masked faces, though, there was a significant difference between high and low trustworthiness faces, indicating that facial cues other than those covered by a mask are used to judge trustworthiness.…”

“… Oldmeadow and Koch (2021) and Marini et al (2021) found low trustworthy faces received a significant boost in trustworthiness when masked, whereas high trustworthy faces did not. Bylianto and Chan (2022) found faces with a happy expression were rated lower in trustworthiness when masked than unmasked. Thus, there is some evidence that masks affect perceived trustworthiness by obstructing facial cues normally used to make such judgments, but the precise nature of this effect is unclear.…”

“…The results of these studies, though, have been mixed. Of 15 papers published between 2020 and 2023, six found masked faces were rated higher in trustworthiness compared to unmasked faces ( Di Crosta et al, 2023 ; Guo et al, 2022 ; Kawakami et al, 2023 ; Lau, 2021 ; Oldmeadow & Koch, 2021 ; Olivera-La Rosa et al, 2020 ), four found masked faces were less trustworthy ( Biermann et al, 2021 ; Bylianto & Chan, 2022 ; Gabrieli & Esposito, 2021 ; Takehara et al, 2023 ), and five found no differences or were inconclusive ( Bennetts et al, 2022 ; C. Twele et al, 2022 ; Cannito et al, 2022 ; Grundmann et al, 2021 ; Oliveira & Garcia-Marques, 2022 ). The variability in results may stem from differences in methodology, as well as contextual factors that influence the meanings given to mask wearing ( Wang et al, 2023 ).…”