Nayani Fatima Z, Yuki Masaki, Maddux William W, Schug Joanna
William & Mary, Department of Psychological Sciences, PO BOX 8795, Williamsburg, VA 23187, United States.
Hokkaido University, Department of Behavioral Science/Center for Experimental Research in Social Sciences, Kita-10, Nishi-7, Kita-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido, 060-0810, Japan.
Curr Res Ecol Soc Psychol. 2023;4:100089. doi: 10.1016/j.cresp.2023.100089. Epub 2023 Jan 14.
Given that mask-wearing proved to be an important tool to slow the spread of infection during the COVID-19 pandemic, investigating the psychological and cultural factors that influence norms for mask wearing across cultures is exceptionally important. One factor that may influence mask wearing behavior is the degree to which people believe masks potentially impair emotion recognition. Based on previous research suggesting that there may be cultural differences in facial regions that people in Japan and the United States attend to when inferring a target's emotional state, we predicted that Americans would perceive masks (which cover the mouth) as more likely to impair emotion recognition, whereas Japanese would perceive facial coverings that conceal the eye region (sunglasses) to be more likely to impair emotion recognition. The results showed that Japanese participants reported wearing masks more than Americans. Americans also reported higher expected difficulty in interpreting emotions of individuals wearing masks (vs. sunglasses), while Japanese reported the reverse effect. Importantly, expectations about the negative impact of facial masks on emotion recognition explained cultural differences in mask-wearing behavior, even accounting for existing social norms.
鉴于在新冠疫情期间，戴口罩被证明是减缓感染传播的一项重要工具，调查影响不同文化背景下口罩佩戴规范的心理和文化因素就显得格外重要。一个可能影响口罩佩戴行为的因素是人们认为口罩可能损害情绪识别的程度。基于之前的研究表明，在推断目标的情绪状态时，日本人和美国人关注的面部区域可能存在文化差异，我们预测美国人会认为口罩（遮住嘴巴）更有可能损害情绪识别，而日本人会认为遮住眼睛区域的面部遮盖物（太阳镜）更有可能损害情绪识别。结果显示，日本参与者报告的戴口罩频率高于美国人。美国人还报告称，解读戴口罩者（与戴太阳镜者相比）的情绪预期难度更高，而日本人报告的情况则相反。重要的是，对面部口罩对情绪识别负面影响的预期解释了口罩佩戴行为的文化差异，甚至考虑到了现有的社会规范。
