When less is not more: the effect of transparent masks on facial attractiveness judgment

Lee and Jeong Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-023-00477-y (2023) 8:21 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications Open Access When less is not more: the effect of transparent masks on facial attractiveness judgment Yongseong Lee1 and Su Keun Jeong1*    Abstract During the COVID-19 pandemic, face masks have been widely used in daily life. Previous studies have suggested that faces wearing typical masks that occlude the lower half of the face are perceived as more attractive than face without masks. However, relatively little work has been done on how transparent masks that reveal the lower half of the face affect the judgment of facial attractiveness. To investigate the effect of transparent masks on the perceived attractiveness, in the current study, we asked participants to rate the attractiveness of faces without masks and with a typical opaque mask and a transparent mask. The results showed that faces wearing opaque masks were evaluated as more attractive than those wearing transparent masks or no masks. The benefit of opaque masks was more pronounced in faces that were initially evaluated as unattractive. Interestingly, wearing transparent masks decreased the perceived attractiveness of faces but only for the faces initially rated as attractive, possibly because of the visual distortion of the lower half of the face by transparent masks. In summary, we found that opaque and transparent masks have different effects on perceived attractiveness, depending on the attractiveness of faces. Given benefits of transparent masks in socio-emotional and cognitive processing, it would be important to further understand the effect of transparent masks on face information processing. Keywords Facial attractiveness, Face masks, Transparent masks, Face occlusion, COVID-19 Significance statement The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated the mandatory use of face masks. The use of transparent masks has become increasingly popular. This study aims to fill the significant gap in research on transparent masks and judgments on facial attractiveness. Given the advantage of transparent masks in various domains such as speech perception, emotion recognition, and language learning, it would be important to further understand the effect of transparent masks on face information processing. *Correspondence: Su Keun Jeong 1 Department of Psychology, Chungbuk National University, Chungdae‑ro 1, Seowon‑Gu, Cheongju 28644, Chungbuk, Korea Introduction Face masks have been widely used because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers have investigated how face masks occluding the lower half of the face influence the social and cognitive processing of information on faces. For example, face recognition has been found to be impaired with masks (Carragher & Hancock, 2020; Freud et al., 2020; Stajduhar et al., 2022). Further, when faces are covered by masks, recognizing emotions from faces becomes more difficult (Gori et al., 2021; Marini et al., 2021; but see Ruba & Pollak, 2020), and the accuracy of estimating ages from faces decreases (Thorley et al., 2022). Another widely studied topic on how masks influence the processing of facial information is the evaluation of facial attractiveness. Recent studies have consistently reported that wearing masks improves © The Author(s) 2023. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Lee and Jeong Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications (2023) 8:21 perceived attractiveness (Hies & Lewis, 2022; Kamatani et al., 2021; Patel et al., 2020; Pazhoohi & Kingstone, 2022). The benefit of partial occlusion of faces for attractiveness judgment was observed even before the COVID19 pandemic. Previous studies conducted before the pandemic have found that reducing information from faces, either by covering faces with an object or directly removing parts of faces, increased the facial attractiveness (Miyazaki & Kawahara, 2016; Sadr & Krowicki, 2019). Further, the effect of occluding a face on the attractiveness judgment was context dependent. In contrast to the studies conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers in Japan showed that faces wearing sanitary masks were perceived as less attractive than those without a mask in 2016 (Miyazaki & Kawahara, 2016). The researchers argued that sanitary masks were associated with unhealthiness and thus lower ratings for attractiveness. Supporting this interpretation, the same study found that covering faces with a neutral item such as a notebook or card increased the perceived attractiveness of faces in the same study. Furthermore, wearing sanitary facial masks increased the attractiveness of faces in Japan when wearing masks was no longer strongly associated with unhealthiness during the COVID-19 pandemic (Kamatani et al., 2021). The use of masks is an effective way to prevent the spread of COVID-19 (Abaluck et al., 2022; Gurbaxani et al., 2022). However, typical opaque masks occlude the lower parts of the face; thus, wearing masks impairs social interaction in personal or educational settings. Transparent masks that leave the lower parts of the face visible have been introduced to overcome the drawbacks of opaque masks. Using transparent masks can improve communication (Kratzke et al., 2021) and emotion recognition (Miyazaki et al., 2022). Furthermore, attention to the oral region can help children learn a language (Lewkowicz & Hansen-Tift, 2012; Tenenbaum et al., 2015). Therefore, transparent masks can be useful for children who need to develop their communication and social skills. Despite the potential social and cognitive advantages of transparent masks, relatively little work has been done on how they affect the visual information processing of faces. For example, despite many studies using typical opaque masks, the effect of transparent masks on the judgment of facial attractiveness remains unclear. Although maskwearing mandates have been lifted in many countries (Stokel-Walker, 2022) the widespread use of masks for more than two years could have shifted facial information processing. Indeed, a recent study demonstrated that only a few months of ex (...truncated)