ArticleScientific reports2021
The impact of facemasks on emotion recognition, trust attribution and re-identification.
Article in Scientific reports, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 122 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
122 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Child mask mandates for COVID-19: a systematic review.Archives of disease in childhood · 2024Pooled it
- The Role of Trust in COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance: Considerations from a Systematic Review.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Pooled it
- Mask wearing increases eye involvement during smiling: a facial EMG study.Scientific reports · 2021Trial
- Hurdles and solutions of communication in clinical practice amidst the COVID-19 pandemic: a cross-sectional study among Sri Lankan medical students.BMC research notes · 2026Article
- No evidence for disruption of empathy and mentalizing by face coverage in multimodal settings.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Facemasks reduce face trustworthiness perceived by deaf individuals.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Exploring the impact mechanisms of EEG signals and emotional intelligence levels on language learning efficiency.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- An exploratory framework for EEG-based monitoring of motivation and performance in athletic-like scenarios.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Impact of mask use on facial emotion recognition in individuals with subclinical social anxiety: an eye-tracking study.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2025Article
- Article
- The Influence of Face Masks on Micro-Expression Recognition.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- How facemasks shape trust in social interactions.PloS one · 2025Article
- Experiences and Impact of Face Masks Use on Patient Communication Among Portuguese Nursing Students During Clinical Practice in Hospital Setting: A Qualitative Descriptive Study.Journal of nursing management · 2025Article
- Article
- Capturing variability in children's faces: an artificial, yet realistic, face stimulus set.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Pupillary responses to masked and gaze-averted faces.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Mathematical modeling of the interaction between endocrine systems and EEG signals.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2025Article
- Masked face matching benefits from isolated facial features.PloS one · 2025Article
- Impact of face masks on empathy and communication in head and neck cancer patients: a case-control study.Frontiers in oncology · 2025Article
- Challenges of face identification with varied mask coverage in the post COVID-19 era.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
62 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Covid-19 pandemics has fostered a pervasive use of facemasks all around the world. While they help in preventing infection, there are concerns related to the possible impact of facemasks on social communication. The present study investigates how emotion recognition, trust attribution and re-identification of faces differ when faces are seen without mask, with a standard medical facemask, and with a transparent facemask restoring visual access to the mouth region. Our results show that, in contrast to standard medical facemasks, transparent masks significantly spare the capability to recognize emotional expressions. Moreover, transparent masks spare the capability to infer trustworthiness from faces with respect to standard medical facemasks which, in turn, dampen the perceived untrustworthiness of faces. Remarkably, while transparent masks (unlike standard masks) do not impair emotion recognition and trust attribution, they seemingly do impair the subsequent re-identification of the same, unmasked, face (like standard masks). Taken together, this evidence supports a dissociation between mechanisms sustaining emotion and identity processing. This study represents a pivotal step in the much-needed analysis of face reading when the lower portion of the face is occluded by a facemask.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.