News Release

Research reveals people can recognize the emotions of other people in face masks

For immediate release: Monday 18 July 2022

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Durham University

-With pictures-

A novel study conducted by psychologists from Durham University, UK has revealed that people can identify emotions and traits of other people wearing a face mask when the whole body is visible.

The findings reveal that during in-person interactions or other settings when the whole body can be seen, there is no difference in people’s ability to recognise emotions whether people are wearing masks or not.

The researchers carried out this experiment with 70 participants from the UK using the stimuli expressing anger, happiness, sadness and fear from Van den Stock and de Gelder’s (2011) BEAST stimuli image set and adding a face mask to those images.

They discovered that participants could effectively recognise emotions portrayed through the body and face masks had no affect at all on emotion recognition.

The study further adds that, although participants recognise the emotions in masked faces overall, they were significantly less accurate at recognising happiness and less confident in judging the emotion of another person in face mask.

Full result of the study has been published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience.

Lead author of the study, Dr Paddy Ross of Durham University, said: “Since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, research has suggested that emotion recognition and social interaction would be seriously affected by wearing face masks.

“However, most of this research has used isolated pictures of heads, which are very rarely seen in the real world. By using pictures of full bodies, we have shown that  wearing face masks makes very little difference to emotion recognition as long as you are also emoting with your body.”

The study results indicate that, in most social interactions, people will be more than capable of determining the emotion of a masked person because emotions can also be conveyed by the body. This is also before taking the voice into account, which is a key aspect of emotion recognition.

The researchers highlight the significant reduction in people’s ability to recognise happiness when a person is wearing face mask. They suggest that people wearing a face mask should put extra effort through their body or voice by using simple gestures such as thumbs up to portray happiness more visibly.

This study contradicts the findings of previous literature, which used isolated images (face only) to determine that face masks limit the emotion recognition capability of people.

The new findings dispel the notion that face masks have a negative influence on people’s ability to read emotions and socially interact with each other, as long as the whole body is visible.

ENDS

Media Information

Dr Paddy Ross of Durham University is available for interview and can be contacted on paddy.ross@durham.ac.uk.   

Alternatively, please contact Durham University Communications Office for interview requests on communications.team@durham.ac.uk.

Source information

‘Are face masks a problem for emotion recognition? Not when the whole body is visible’, (2022), P. Ross and E. George, Frontiers in Neuroscience.

Full paper is available here: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2022.915927/full?&utm_source=Email_to_authors_&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=T1_11.5e1_author&utm_campaign=Email_publication&field=&journalName=Frontiers_in_Neuroscience&id=915927

Graphics

Associated image is available via the following link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/il5x4nrci51suab/Picture1.jpg?dl=0

Useful Web Links  

Dr Paddy Ross staff profile: https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/paddy-ross/  

Department of Psychology: https://www.durham.ac.uk/psychology/

About Durham University

Durham University is a globally outstanding centre of teaching and research based in historic Durham City in the UK.

We are a collegiate university committed to inspiring our people to do outstanding things at Durham and in the world.

We conduct boundary-breaking research that improves lives globally and we are ranked as a world top 100 university with an international reputation in research and education (QS World University Rankings 2023).

We are a member of the Russell Group of leading research-intensive UK universities and we are consistently ranked as a top 10 university in national league tables (Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide, Guardian University Guide and The Complete University Guide).

For more information about Durham University visit: www.durham.ac.uk/about/

END OF MEDIA RELEASE – issued by Durham University Communications Office.


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