Impact of Face Masks on Smile Recognition and Emotional Contagion in Adults and Children

Abstract

A growing number of studies, prompted by the global spread of COVID-19, have confirmed that face masks can affect emotion recognition of perceivers. However, it remains underexplored whether face masks also influence emotional contagion, especially among children―despite concerns that the developmental impact could be more significant for children than for adults. In this study, we examine the effects of face masks on smile recognition and emotional contagion among children and adults using a large-scale web experiment (n＝1,744; Japanese sample; 807 child perceivers and 937 adult perceivers). Our findings reveal heterogenous impacts of face masks on smile recognition and perceivers’ emotions, depending on characteristics of both the expressers and the perceivers. First, while face masks generally impair smile recognition, they can sometimes make neutral faces appear more like smiles. Second, compared to children, adults are more likely to interpret neutral faces without masks as smiling; therefore, the reduction in smile recognition caused by masks is greater for adults, particularly adult males. In contrast, face masks disrupt emotional contagion more strongly in children than in adults. Furthermore, our mediation analysis indicates that masks directly reduce the spread of positive emotion, rather than indirectly through impaired smile recognition. In addition, we observe that masks may also heighten negative emotions in perceivers.