The effect of face masks on the stereotype effect in emotion perception

The accurate and swift decoding of emotional expressions from faces is fundamental for social communication. Yet, emotion perception is prone to error. For example, the ease with which emotions are perceived is affected by stereotypes (Bijlstra, Holland, & Wigboldus, 2010). Moreover, the introduction of face masks mandates in response to the Covid-19 pandemic additionally impedes accurate emotion perception by introducing ambiguity to the emotion perception process. Predictive coding frameworks of visual perception predict that in such situations of increased ambiguity of the sensory input (i.e., faces with masks), people increasingly rely on their prior beliefs (i.e., their stereotypes). Using specification curve analysis, we tested this prediction across two experiments, featuring different social categories (Study 1: Gender; Study 2: Ethnicity) and corresponding emotion stereotypes. We found no evidence that face masks increase reliance on prior stereotypes. In contrast, in Study 1 (but not in Study 2), we found preliminary evidence that face masks decrease reliance on prior stereotypes. We discuss these findings in relation to predictive coding frameworks and dual process models and emphasize the need for up-to-date analytic methods in social cognition research.