Mask exposure during COVID-19 changes emotional face processing.

ABSTRACT: Faces are one of the key ways that we obtain social information about others. They allow people to identify individuals, understand conversational cues, and make judgements about others' mental states. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States, widespread mask-wearing practices were implemented, causing a shift in the way Americans typically interact. This introduction of masks into social exchanges posed a potential challenge-how would people make these important inferences about others when a large source of information was no longer available? We conducted two studies that investigated the impact of mask exposure on emotion perception. In particular, we measured how participants used facial landmarks (visual cues) and the expressed valence and arousal (affective cues), to make si

SUBMITTER: Barrick EM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8509869 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature