More Misclassification Effect of Face Mask on Emotion Recognition than Unmasked Faces

2AbstractThis study aims to investigate the impact of face masks on recognising emotions. 121Participants aged from 15 to 59 (M = 23.7, SD = 7.7), with 94 (78%) identified as female and27 (22%) male, completed emotions recognition tasks for masked and unmasked faces.Repeated measures ANOVA found significant effects of the mask (F(1, 120) = 1405.41, p <.001, = .92), emotions (F(3.88, 465.36) = 313.87, p < .001, = .72), and their interactionη𝑝2 η𝑝2(F(5.19, 622.69) = 103.63, p < .001, = .46). Post hoc comparisons showed significantη𝑝2differences between masked and unmasked conditions for all emotions (p < .001). Resultsshow that emotion recognition was more likely to be misclassified in masked faces, with astronger effect on disgust and lower effects on anger, fear, and neutral, suggesting variousemotions might be recognised in different facial features