| dc.description.abstract | The Covid-19 pandemic introduced mask wearing on a global scale. As a consequence, people noticed a barrier in face-to-face communication. Previous studies found just seeing the eyes of a face, like wearing a mask, impaired participant's ability to read the intensity of an emotion (Beaudry et al., 2014). We decided to look further into how face masks impact a person’s ability to perceive emotions. We replicated the study conducted by Teddi et al.(2023) The goal of the study was to understand the relationship between facial coverings and emotional recognition. We gathered data using a repeated-measures Qualtrics survey with 55 subjects. We presented pictures of faces portraying an emotion with and without masks. We hypothesized that participants would rate the faces with masks as more negative and less positive regardless of which emotion was presented. The findings supported our hypothesis. The participants rated the faces with masks expressing negative and neutral emotions more negatively, and positive emotions less positively. This was consistent with the study replicated. Masks seem to present emotions as more negative than the emotion the person wearing the mask is trying to convey. | en_US |
