Face masks bolsters the characteristics from looking at a face even when facial expressions are impaired

Face masks impact social interactions because emotion recognition is difficult due to face occlusion by the masks. But is this enough to draw conclusions that face masks causes negative social interactions? We investigated the impact of face masks on invariant characteristics, trait-like characteristics, and emotional expressions for faces with and without face masks. Participants completed an online survey and rated masked and no-masked faces. The same face was only seen with or without a mask throughout the survey. According to the results, when compared to no-masked faces, participants faced difficulties rating emotional expressions for masked faces. Some expressions appeared less intense when viewed with facemasks. Other characteristics received better ratings when the face was shown with masks. Post-hoc modelling revealed that ratings for masked faces could also predict ratings for no-masked faces, vice versa. This suggested that some aspects such as emotional expressions, were negatively impeded by face masks. However, not all aspects derived from viewing the face were affected the same way. This was because participants favored other characteristics for masked faces than for no-masked faces. Therefore, face masks did not necessarily impact social interactions negatively as only certain characteristics (i.e., emotional expressions) weredifficult to evaluate. Future directions were proposed to expand the research.

面部口罩会对社交互动产生影响，原因在于口罩对面部的遮挡会提升情绪识别的难度。但仅凭这一点是否足以得出「面部口罩会引发负面社交互动」的结论？本研究针对佩戴与未佩戴口罩的人脸，探究了口罩对面部固有特征、特质类特征以及情绪表达的影响。受试者完成了一项在线调查，对戴口罩与未戴口罩的人脸进行评分；在整个调查过程中，同一人脸仅以戴口罩或未戴口罩的单一状态呈现。研究结果显示，相较于未戴口罩的人脸，受试者对戴口罩人脸的情绪表达评分难度更高，部分情绪表达在口罩遮挡下会显得强度更低；而当人脸佩戴口罩时，其他部分特征的评分反而更高。事后建模分析表明，戴口罩人脸的评分也可用于预测未戴口罩人脸的评分，反之亦然。这意味着情绪表达等部分特征会受到口罩的负面影响，但并非所有从人脸视觉提取的特征都会受到同等程度的影响——相较于未戴口罩的人脸，受试者会更关注佩戴口罩人脸的其他特征。因此，面部口罩未必会对社交互动产生负面影响，仅部分特征（即情绪表达）的评估难度有所提升。最后本研究提出了未来的研究拓展方向。