The effect of medical face masks on first impressions across race and time: Testing social and perceptual explanations

Abstract

A growing body of research shows medical face masks to affect face perception and recognition. Although face masks negatively impact recognition of face identities and emotion expressions, they largely positively affect trait impressions. Here, focusing on impressions of trustworthiness and responsibility, we bridge between various lines of inquiry in the extant literature. First, among American perceivers, we test whether the effect of masks varies by target faces’ race, crucially including targets from three racial groups: Asian, Black, and White. Next, we examine the extent to which effects can be explained by the presence of masks versus the absence of lower facial information. Finally, we examine the role of temporal context, testing masks’ effect on trustworthiness and responsibility judgments in early 2021 and mid 2023. Altogether, we find face masks to have a positive effect on trustworthiness and responsibility judgments. Lack of lower facial information explained some, but not all, of the effect of masking, indicating that masks provide a specific social signal that affects trait judgments beyond the effect of occlusion. Finally, we found the positive effect of masking on trait judgments to persist in 2023 but decrease in magnitude compared to 2021, indicating that the social meaning of masks has waned over time. Masking effects were moreover stronger for White than Black (2021, 2023) and Asian targets (2023) and among perceivers with more positive attitudes toward masking (especially in 2023). Altogether, we provide evidence that both bottom-up perceptual and top-down social factors influence social perceptions of masked faces.