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. 2023 Oct 30:14:1217736.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1217736. eCollection 2023.

Recognition of masked and unmasked facial expressions in males and females and relations with mental wellness

Marie Huc  1   2 , Katie Bush  1 , Gali Atias  1 , Lindsay Berrigan  3   4 , Sylvia Cox  5   6 , Natalia Jaworska  1   2   4   7
Affiliations

Recognition of masked and unmasked facial expressions in males and females and relations with mental wellness

Marie Huc et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

Background: While the effects of mask wearing/facial occlusion are known to impair facial expression recognition, little is known about the role of mental wellness on facial expression recognition, as well as the influence of sex on misattribution errors (i.e., confusions between emotions). In this large study, we aimed to address the relation between facial expression recognition and loneliness, perceived stress, anxiety, and depression symptoms in male and female adults.

Methods: We assessed the influence of mask-wearing on facial expression recognition [i.e., accuracy and response time (RT)] via an online study in N = 469 adult males and females across Canada.

Results: Expectedly, recognition was impaired under masked conditions (i.e., lower accuracy, longer RTs, more misattribution errors). Females were faster and more accurate than males, with less misattribution errors. A novel finding was that people with higher perceived stress were less accurate at identifying masked fearful faces. Perceived stress influenced the relation between sex and RT to masked happy faces; males with high stress scores were slower to recognize masked happy faces, the opposite was true for females. Finally, this study was among the first to show that higher loneliness predicted shorter RT to unmasked faces.

Impact: Our results show that facial expression recognition is impaired by mask-wearing, and that sex and mental health features are important predictors of performance. Such insight could be detrimental in certain sectors of the population (e.g., health care or education), and inform policies being adopted in future pandemics.

Keywords: anxiety/stress; depression; emotion; face mask; loneliness; mental health; sex differences.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Emotional processing tasks. (A) Two versions of the tasks were created with masked or unmasked facial expression conditions using pictures of actors selected from the NimStim dataset, adapted from “The NimStim set of facial expressions: Judgments from untrained research participants” by Tottenham et al. (2009), Copyright 2008 by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. Reproduced with permission of Elsevier. (B) A trial consisted of a fixation cross (500 ms), followed by the stimuli (450 ms), and a response window (2,250–2,900 ms, mean: 2,500 ms).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Reaction times (RT) to different facial expressions of emotion under masked and unmasked conditions (mean and standard deviations are presented). *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Accuracy to different facial expressions of emotion under (A) unmasked and (B) masked conditions in males and females (mean and standard deviations are presented). *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001. The maximum accuracy score is 24 per emotion.
Figure 4
Figure 4
The moderating role of Perceived Stress Scale (PSS)-indexed stress scores on the relationship between sex and response times to masked happy faces. The low, average, and high scores correspond to the 16th, 50th, and 84th percentile respectively.
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Grants and funding

This work was supported by the University of Ottawa’s Brain and Mind Research Institute (uOBMRI) (Mental Health Trainee Researcher Award). The uOBMRI had no additional role in study design, data collection, analysis, writing and submission of this paper for publication.

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