The use of face masks became popular during the corona epidemic as a means of public and personal health control against the spread of the epidemic. New research from the University of York has found that identifying another person may be more difficult when you wear a face mask – even if the person you’re looking at is not wearing a mask.
Previous studies have shown that adults and children have difficulty recognizing faces when part of their own face is hidden by a mask, such as those worn during the coronavirus pandemic, and this does not improve over time. This new series of experiments conducted in York sheds light on how face perception abilities go awry for the person wearing a mask, regardless of whether the person they are looking at is masked or unmasked.
“We wanted to investigate the effect of wearing a mask on face recognition – something that has not been studied before as far as we know – to see how the perceptual abilities of a masked viewer change in relation to others,” said Assistant Professor Erez Freud from the Faculty of Health at York, who co-authored the study with the students. For undergraduates at York, Daniela DiGiamarino and Carmel Camiller.
As part of the study, four different experiments involving 80 participants were conducted. Each of them was shown a face without a mask and with a mask when they themselves wore a mask or did not wear a mask. The results were surprising – wearing a mask affected the participants’ ability to recognize the faces of others. The deciding factor was not whether the presented face had a mask or not, but whether or not the participant had his mask on at the moment of recognition.
Freud says that one explanation could be that when people wear a mask, they often think that others cannot recognize them. “Masked observers may think their faces are less recognizable and this may lead to reduced face processing abilities. This may be related to how people see things from other people’s perspectives, a process called ‘alter centric intrusion’.”
Another reason, he said, could be related to the constant tactile stimulation of the lower part of the mask wearer’s face, creating a reminder that people can’t see that part of their face, which can make it harder for them to recognize it. The effect, however, only worked when wearing a mask in the typical way – covering the nose and mouth.
“We also discovered that the effect of the mask pen on the face is specific to situations where you only put the mask on the nose and mouth,” Freud said. “When we asked the research participants to put the face mask on the forehead, we did not find any effect of the mask pen on the ability to perceive the face.” Additionally, the effect only occurs with faces, not objects. When participants were asked to identify things like an orange, their ability to identify was slightly unaffected by a mask.
“I was a little surprised by the results of this study,” Freud said. “I didn’t think we’d find such a strong effect of a mask pen on face perception abilities, but I guess that’s one of the reasons why we do science.”