Does mask-wearing alter observers' ability to recognize faces : exploring possible links to social anxiety

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, face masks were widely used as a way to protect people from viruses. Mask-wearing has also become commonly used across countries even after the pandemic. Various research demonstrated that using face masks hindered people’s facial recognition abilities as they covered a large area of the faces, disrupting the holistic processing of the faces. However, there were limited studies investigating the observers’ mask-wearing effect on facial recognition abilities. Therefore, the current study examined the conditions under which mask type would influence observers’ face recognition abilities. Of particular interest, the moderating effect of social anxiety between the observers’ mask-wearing effect and facial recognition abilities was also examined. Participants were recruited and assigned to three masktype groups (either wearing a surgical mask, a transparent mask, or not wearing a mask). Each of them had completed three tasks with different stimuli presented (i.e. unmasked faces, masked faces, and objects). Levels of social anxiety and generalized anxiety were measured. It was found that task conditions had significant effects on recognition performance. However, the mask type effect could not be obtained in this study. Surprisingly, the significant moderating effects were tapped on the generalized anxiety instead of social anxiety. Further study with a larger sample size was recommended to investigate this area of interest.