Department of Social Neuroscience and Social Psychology, Institute of Psychology, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
Sci Rep. 2023 Dec 15;13(1):22327. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-49127-9.
People readily make inferences about trait-like characteristics of another person's face. Since the recent global COVID-19 pandemic, the widespread use of hygienic face masks has led to large proportions of the face being covered. We investigated the effect of face masks on the inference of prosocially relevant characteristics, namely cooperativeness and honesty. Portraits of participants of previous studies from which we knew their "true" prosocial tendencies served as stimuli. These facial stimuli were presented once with and once without a hygienic face mask to 60 naïve participants who rated the faces for cooperativeness and honesty. Results revealed that wearing face masks made people generally appear more cooperative and more honest than without a mask, but that these ratings were unrelated to the true prosocial tendencies of these people. Together, these findings have important implications for social interactions, particularly in contexts where nonverbal communication is essential, such as in healthcare settings, job interviews, and social gatherings.
人们很容易根据他人面部的特征来推断其性格特征。自最近的全球 COVID-19 大流行以来，卫生口罩的广泛使用导致面部的很大一部分被遮盖。我们研究了口罩对面部与亲社会相关特征（即合作性和诚实性）推断的影响。参与者的肖像画来自之前的研究，我们知道他们的“真实”亲社会倾向作为刺激。这些面部刺激物在 60 名天真的参与者面前展示了一次，参与者在有和没有卫生口罩的情况下对这些面部刺激物进行了合作性和诚实性的评分。结果表明，戴口罩使人们看起来比不戴口罩时更具有合作性和更诚实，但这些评分与这些人的真实亲社会倾向无关。总之，这些发现对社会互动具有重要意义，特别是在非言语交流至关重要的情况下，例如在医疗保健环境、工作面试和社交聚会中。
