Social sensitivity predicts accurate emotion inference from facial expressions in a face mask: a study in Japan

Current Psychology https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04344-3 Social sensitivity predicts accurate emotion inference from facial expressions in a face mask: a study in Japan Shinnosuke Ikeda1 Accepted: 27 January 2023 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2023 Abstract Most prior research examining whether emotions can be accurately inferred from facial expressions with masks have been conducted with Western samples. Thus, there is a current lack of studies on this topic, as well as on factors affecting individual differences in the accuracy of emotion inference, among non-Western samples. This study examined the effects of social anxiety and social sensitivity on the accuracy of emotion inference from masked facial expressions in a Japanese sample. The results showed that wearing a mask made it difficult to identify the emotions of sadness and fear, happy and neutral expressions remained unaffected, and angry expressions were read more accurately. Further, while the findings show that a general higher ability to infer emotions from facial expressions may help ensure the accuracy of emotion inference from facial expressions with a mask, social sensitivity directly predicted the accuracy of emotion inference from facial expressions with a mask. These findings suggest that people who can infer complex mental states of others from subtle cues may be less susceptible to the effects of face masks. Keywords Face mask · Facial expression · Emotion inference · Individual difference · Social sensitivity The COVID-19 pandemic, raging worldwide since 2020, has greatly impacted our lives (Farooq et al., 2021). One of the most significant lifestyle changes during the pandemic is the requirement of wearing a face mask to prevent infection (Khel et al., 2021). Thus, in daily life, people now often communicate with each other while wearing face masks. In daily communication, one of the major effects of waring such masks is their partial hiding of one’s facial expressions, since the lower half of the face gets hidden. Facial expression is an important nonverbal cue for communicating one’s intentions, attitudes, and emotions (Planalp et al., 1996), and it has been found that people usually infer others’ emotions by integrating cues from the expressions of the eyes and mouth (Calvo et al., 2013). Therefore, if a part of the face is hidden, it leads to inaccurate inferences about emotions from facial expressions (Roberson et al., 2012). Shinnosuke Ikeda 1 Faculty of Humanities, Kyoto University of Advanced Science, Gotanda-chou, Yamanouchi, Ukyo-ku, 18, Kyoto, Japan Particularly since the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, studies have pointed out that emotions cannot be accurately deciphered from facial expressions if the person is wearing a face mask. For example, Carbon (2020) presented 41 participants aged 18 − 87 years with six types of facial expressions (happy, angry, sad, fearful, disgusted, and neutral); each expression was shown both with and without a mask. The participants judged the emotions expressed in the photos, and reported their degree of confidence in the responses. The results showed that the percentage of correct responses decreased significantly for all expressions when face masks were worn, except for the fearful and neutral expressions. In addition, participants’ confidence in their responses was significantly lower for all expressions when the mask was worn. Further, the results of a false-answer analysis suggested that wearing a mask increased the probability of misinterpreting disgusted expressions as angry and happy expressions as neutral. Thus, research has shown that masked facial expressions do not allow for accurate emotion inference (Grundmann et al., 2021; Parada-Fernandez et al., 2021). Moreover, wearing a mask not only reduced the rate of correct responses but also increased the time taken to infer emotions from facial expressions (Fitousi et al., 2021). In a 13 Current Psychology study examining the effects of masks on children aged 3 − 5 and 6 − 8 years and adults aged 18 − 30 years, toddlers (3 − 5 years old) showed a lowered ability to read emotions from faces with a mask than adults (Gori et al., 2021). However, even among adults, wearing a face mask has been shown to impair the accuracy of emotional inferences. Studies have pointed out the factors at the individual level that affect emotion inference from facial expressions wearing masks, including empathy (Ramachandra & Longacre, 2022), autistic traits (Pazhoohi et al., 2021), and emotional intelligence (Cannavò et al., 2022). Although some studies have been conducted in the Eastern region (Kim et al., 2022), studies reporting the difficulty of inferring emotions from facial expressions when wearing a mask have been mainly conducted in Western countries. However, people in Japan have been wearing masks in general since before the COVID-19 pandemic (Miyazaki et al., 2021). Therefore, people from Eastern countries may be more accustomed to inferring emotions from facial expressions while wearing face masks compared to people from Western countries. In addition, it has been shown that people from Eastern countries, including Japan, tend to pay more attention to the eyes when inferring emotions from facial expressions (Jack et al., 2009), and to place more importance on emotions expressed in the eyes (Jack et al., 2012; Yuki et al., 2007). Considering these findings, it is possible that Japanese people are relatively less susceptible (vs. people from Western countries) to the effects of wearing a mask that hides the lower half of the facial expression. The present study investigated the accuracy of inferring emotions from facial expressions covered by a mask in Japanese university students. Furthermore, this study focused on personal characteristics that may affect emotion inference from facial expressions in a mask. The two characteristics examined here were social anxiety and social sensitivity. Social anxiety is the tendency to feel anxious or fearful about being negatively evaluated by others (Schlenker & Leary, 1982; Turner et al., 1987), and research has identified individual differences in social anxiety tendencies (Watson & Friend, 1969). It has been suggested that people with higher social anxiety are more sensitive to the eyes when inferring others’ emotions (Ikeda, 2020). This may be because the eye area is difficult to control intentionally and is therefore more likely to express authentic emotion (Ekman et al., 1988), and social anxiety is a very important personality trait that may explain cultural differences in emotion recognition (Ikeda, 2020; Ishii et al., 2011). People with high social anxiety are highly motivated or anxious to know what others are really feeling. Social anxiety is also associated with factors influencing the accuracy of emotion inference from masked facial expressions, such as autistic t (...truncated)