Abstract
In the wake of global pandemic, interacting with others while wearing masks is emerging as a challenge worldwide. A growing body of literature has reported that face masks hinder emotion recognition in Western samples. Given that diagnostic facial features for recognizing specific emotions (e.g., happiness) differ between Western and Eastern cultures, there would be cultural differences in the effect of face masks on emotion recognition. Relying on the cultural/dialect learning theory in emotion recognition, we conducted a preregistered study where 203 American and 209 Japanese participants judged the emotional expressions of faces (happy, angry, fearful, sad, disgust, and neutral) with/without masks. The results showed cultural differences in the emotion recognition of faces with and without masks. Specifically, face masks hindered happy emotion recognition more in Americans than in Japanese. The results suggest that the effect of wearing masks on emotion recognition depends on the types of emotions and culture.
