Department of Psychology, Social and Organizational Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Clinic for Psychiatry, Psychosomatics, and Psychotherapy of Childhood and Adolescence, Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Sci Rep. 2023 Sep 8;13(1):14848. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-40007-w.
Emotional mimicry, the imitation of others' emotion expressions, is related to increased interpersonal closeness and better interaction quality. Yet, little research has focused on the effect of face masks on emotional mimicry and none on (masked) child faces. To address this gap, we conducted an online experiment (N = 235, German sample, adult perceivers). Masks reduced emotion recognition accuracy for all expressions, except in the case of anger in masked child faces, where perceived anger was even increased. Perceived interpersonal closeness was reduced for masked happy and sad faces. For both child and adult expressers, masks reduced facial mimicry of happy expressions, with no mask effects for sadness and anger expression. A stronger mask effect on facial happiness mimicry of child faces was mediated by the degree of emotion recognition accuracy. Smiles shown by masked children were not recognized well, likely due to the absence of wrinkles around the eyes in child faces. Independent of masks, sadness shown by children was mimicked even more strongly than when shown by adults. These results provide evidence for facial mimicry of child expressions by adult perceivers and show that the effects of face masks on emotion communication may vary when children wear them.
情绪模仿，即模仿他人的情绪表达，与增加人际亲密感和提高互动质量有关。然而，很少有研究关注口罩对面部模仿的影响，也没有研究关注（戴口罩的）儿童面部。为了解决这一差距，我们进行了一项在线实验（N = 235，德国样本，成年观察者）。口罩降低了所有表情的情绪识别准确性，除了戴口罩的儿童面部的愤怒表情，在这种情况下，感知到的愤怒甚至增加了。对戴口罩的快乐和悲伤面孔的人际亲密感降低。对于儿童和成人表达者来说，口罩都减少了对快乐表情的面部模仿，而对悲伤和愤怒表情则没有口罩效应。对儿童面部的面部快乐模仿的口罩效应更强，这是由情绪识别准确性的程度介导的。戴口罩的儿童的笑容无法被很好地识别，可能是因为儿童面部缺乏眼睛周围的皱纹。与口罩无关，儿童表现出的悲伤甚至比成年人表现出的悲伤更强烈地被模仿。这些结果为成年观察者对儿童表情的面部模仿提供了证据，并表明当儿童戴口罩时，口罩对面部表情的影响可能会有所不同。
