The Effect of Face Masks and Sunglasses on Emotion Perception over Two Years of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, face masks have become a common experience for many people to reduce the spread of the disease. Although recent research has shown that face masks impair emotion recognition, it is unclear how this impairment differs from other familiar types of face covering, such as sunglasses. In the present study, participants identified expressions and rated their confidence in this assessment of six affective expressions (anger, disgust, fear, surprise, sadness, and happiness) on faces wearing masks or sunglasses at four different time points during the pandemic (June 2020, March 2021, September 2021, June 2022). They also provided judgements of emotion intensity and genuineness. Overall, emotion identification of faces with masks was less accurate and had lower ratings of confidence and emotion intensity than faces with sunglasses. Faces with sunglasses, alternatively, were rated as less genuine than faces with masks. Furthermore, this pattern for both masks and sunglasses remained stable across two years of the pandemic. This study provides new insights on the differential effects of face masks and sunglasses on emotion perception and highlights the importance of face coverings for emotion communication and social interactions.