Smiling makes you look older, even when you wear a mask: the effect of face masks on age perception

Abstract

The widespread use of face masks in the era of the Covid-19 pandemic has promoted research on their effect on the perception and recognition of faces. There is growing evidence that masks hinder the recognition of identity and expression, as well as the interpretation of speech from facial cues. It is less clear whether and in what manner masks affect the perception of age from facial cues. Recent research has emphasized the role of the upper region of the face, a part not covered by a mask, in the evaluation of age. For example, smile-related wrinkles in the region of the eyes make smiling faces appear older than neutral faces of the same individuals (the aging effect of smiling, AES). In two experiments, we tested the effect of face masks on age evaluations of neutral and smiling faces in a range of different age groups from 20 to 80 years. The results showed that smiling faces were perceived as older than neutral faces even when individuals were wearing a face mask—and there was no effect of masks on bias in age evaluations. Additional analyses showed reduced accuracy in age evaluations for smiling compared to neutral faces and for masked compared to unmasked faces. The results converge on previous studies emphasizing the importance of the upper region of the face in evaluations of age.

Biases in human perception of facial age are present and more exaggerated in current AI technology

“…We can only speculate as to the source of this effect. Recently, we observed a similar pattern of results in human observers who were asked to estimate the age of photos of faces of old adults wearing face masks 22 . The similarity between patterns of results may imply that machine-learning technology relies more heavily on partial facial information in the upper region of the face that is unobscured by masks 23 .…”

Face coverings: Considering the implications for face perception and speech communication

“…This is consistent with the paper by Thorley et al ( 2022 ) who found that eyewitnesses may struggle when perpetrators wear face masks during offences (but not at identification). They also found inaccurate age estimates of people who wear face masks (also see Ganel & Goodale, 2022 ; Wong & Estudillo, 2022 ). The paper by Carragher et al, ( 2022 ) suggests that some of the deficit in masked face matching may be alleviated by feature-based training.…”

The social factors behind the mask: contextual effects on trait impressions from faces wearing a face mask

“…On the one hand, face masks inevitably hinder relevant parts of the face and therefore the perceptual information available for making any inference is reduced (i.e., the area around the mouth). As a consequence, the occlusion of the lower part of the face may potentially alter the inferential processes that typically occur in the case of uncovered faces (see Ganel & Goodale, 2022 ; Oliveira & Garcia-Marques, 2022 ). In the present work, we will not focus on these relevant processes, but rather on the role of more conceptual information.…”