Reduced Perceived Trustworthiness during Face Mask Wearing

Abstract

To curb the diffusion of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), governments worldwide have introduced different policies, including lockdowns, social distancing, and mandatory mask wearing. Face mask wearing, especially, has an impact on the formation of first impressions, given that when meeting someone for the first time, individuals rely on the only available piece of information, the newly met person’s aesthetic appearance, in order to make initial estimations of other traits, such as competence, intelligence, or trustworthiness. However, face mask wearing affects the aesthetic appearance of an individual, creating uncertainty which, in turn, has been reported to reduce others’ perceived trustworthiness. In this paper, the influence of face mask wearing on strangers’ perceived trustworthiness and aesthetic appearance is assessed to verify the impact of this policy on impression formation. Participants (N = 71) have been instructed to assess the trustworthiness and the aesthetic appearance of a selection of 96 images depicting individuals of different ages (children, adults, and older adults), gender (men and women), and ethnicity (Asians or Caucasians). Participants were randomly divided into two groups: an experimental group and a control group. Participants in the experimental group (N = 38) rated faces of individuals wearing a face mask, while participants in the control group rated the same faces but in the absence of a face mask. Images were presented in random order. For each face, participants were asked to rate the aesthetic appearance and perceived trustworthiness of the stranger on two different 100-point Likert scales. Results demonstrate that (i) the correlation between perceived trustworthiness and aesthetic appearance is not affected by the presence of a face mask, and (ii) age, but not ethnicity and gender, influences the magnitude of differences in perceived trustworthiness levels during mask wearing.

Face Mask Reduces the Effect of Proposer’s (Un)Trustworthiness on Intertemporal and Risky Choices

“…In this study we replicated the same paradigm, trying to verify if face masks used as a safety measure against COVID-19 could influence the proposer’s perceived trustworthiness and, therefore, it modulates the impact of proposer’s perceived trustworthiness on participants’ decision-making outcomes. In particular, as based on existing evidence, which suggests that wearing a mask reduces perceived trustworthiness ( Biermann et al, 2021 ; Gabrieli and Esposito, 2021 ), we may expect that the presence of the mask would let participants to perceive untrustworthy proposers as even more untrustworthy, thus amplifying the effect of proposers’ untrustworthiness on discounting behavior. On the other side, in a more indirect way, as literature suggested that wearing a mask increases perceived trustworthiness ( Pandey and Zayas, 2021 ), we could also expect that the presence of the mask produces an increase in perceived trustworthiness for untrustworthy proposers, thus reducing the effect of proposers’ untrustworthiness on discounting behavior.…”

“…Furthermore, some evidence highlighted that the effect of mask wearing influences not only emotion recognition but also other face-induced perceived features, such as perceived trustworthiness. For example, it was recently shown that a masked face received significantly lower perceived trustworthiness evaluations as compared to the no-masked version ( Gabrieli and Esposito, 2021 ). Similarly, in another work, authors reported a similar result also showing that reduced trustworthiness effect for masked stimuli was stronger for those participants who thought that mask had a poorer protecting capability and felt more burdened when wearing it ( Biermann et al, 2021 ).…”

The role of face masks within in-patient psychotherapy: Results of a survey among inpatients and healthcare professionals

“…This link was amplified by the experience of high distress which also applies for highly strained healthcare professionals during the pandemic. Gabrieli and Esposito (2021) showed that, compared to a non-mask condition, age, and gender of the counterpart had an influence on the subjective perception of trust in masked interaction partners. Adults and older individuals and individuals of different gender were perceived to be less trustworthy when wearing a mask.…”

“…The greatest difference concerning the negative influence of face masks was found within individual therapy on both ends, professionals and patients especially for the aspects of “being understood by the therapist,” “my therapist means it honestly,” and “being able to trust the patient.” Although there are mixed findings on the assessment of the trustworthiness of a counterpart wearing a face mask, an overall tendency toward a negative bias in the assessment of trustworthiness can be derived from current literature (e.g., Carbon, 2020 ; Gabrieli and Esposito, 2021 ; Marini et al, 2022 ).…”

Emotional context can reduce the negative impact of face masks on inferring emotions

“…Many social judgments are made from facial cues (e.g., Klapper et al, 2016). It is thus unsurprising that face masks have been shown to impact many of these judgments, including reducing perceived closeness (Grundmann et al, 2021), increasing perceived attractiveness (Hies and Lewis, 2022;Parada-Fernández et al, 2022) and either increasing (Cartaud et al, 2020; but see Grundmann et al, 2021) or decreasing (Biermann et al, 2021;Gabrieli and Esposito, 2021) perceived trustworthiness. The alterations in such secondorder trait perception likely stem from the obstruction of the visual information from the lower face cues needed for basic processes that inform these judgments, such as emotion recognition (Carbon, 2020;Grundmann et al, 2021;Carbon and Serrano, 2021;Williams et al, 2021;Grenville and Dwyer, 2022;Kim et al, 2022;McCrackin et al, 2022a;Parada-Fernández et al, 2022).…”