McCrackin Sarah D, Ristic Jelena
Department of Psychology, McGill University, 2001 McGill College Avenue, Montreal, QC H3A 1G1, Canada.
Behav Sci (Basel). 2024 Sep 20;14(9):850. doi: 10.3390/bs14090850.
Sharing of emotional states is reduced for individuals wearing face coverings, but the mechanism behind this reduction remains unknown. Here, we investigated if face occlusion by masks reduces empathy by disrupting configural processing of emotional faces. Participants rated their empathy for happy and neutral faces which were presented in upright or inverted orientation and wore opaque, clear, or no face masks. Empathy ratings were reduced for masked faces (opaque or clear) as well as for inverted faces. Importantly, face inversion disrupted empathy more for faces wearing opaque masks relative to those wearing clear or no masks, which stands in contrast to the predictions generated by the classic configural processing models. We discuss these data within the context of classic and novel configural face perception models, and highlight that studying inverted occluded faces presents an informative case worthy of further investigation.
对于佩戴面部遮盖物的个体而言，情绪状态的分享会减少，但这种减少背后的机制仍不为人知。在此，我们研究了口罩对面部的遮挡是否会通过干扰情绪面孔的构型加工而降低同理心。参与者对以正立或倒置方向呈现的快乐面孔和中性面孔的同理心进行评分，同时他们佩戴不透明口罩、透明口罩或不戴口罩。戴口罩（不透明或透明）的面孔以及倒置的面孔的同理心评分均降低。重要的是，相对于戴透明口罩或不戴口罩的面孔，面部倒置对戴不透明口罩的面孔的同理心干扰更大，这与经典构型加工模型所产生的预测相反。我们在经典和新颖的构型面部感知模型的背景下讨论这些数据，并强调研究倒置被遮挡的面孔是一个值得进一步研究的信息丰富的案例。
