ArticleCognitive research: principles and implications2022
Face masks versus sunglasses: limited effects of time and individual differences in the ability to judge facial identity and social traits.
Article in Cognitive research: principles and implications, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 24 citations in OpenAlex.
- Congruency effects and individual differences in masked face recognition under limited feature visibility.Memory & cognition · 2025Article
- Embodied Impact of Facial Coverings: Triggering Self-Expression Needs to Drive Conspicuous Preferences.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The Crucial Role of the Eyes in Predicting Facial Attractiveness from Parts.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The social factors behind the mask: contextual effects on trait impressions from faces wearing a face mask.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2024Article
- Article
- Face masks are less effective than sunglasses in masking face identity.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Impact of face masks and sunglasses on attractiveness, trustworthiness, and familiarity, and limited time effect: a Japanese sample.Discover psychology · 2023Article
- The impact of face masks on infants' learning of faces: An eye tracking study.Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant Studies · 2023Article
- Detecting a familiar person behind the surgical mask: recognition without identification among masked versus sunglasses-covered faces.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2022Article
- Incomplete faces are completed using a more average face.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2022Article
- The effects of face coverings, own-ethnicity biases, and attitudes on emotion recognition.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2022Article
- The influence of familiarity on memory for faces and mask wearing.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Some research indicates that face masks impair identification and other judgements such as trustworthiness. However, it is unclear whether those effects have abated over time as individuals adjust to widespread use of masks, or whether performance is related to individual differences in face recognition ability. This study examined the effect of masks and sunglasses on face matching and social judgements (trustworthiness, competence, attractiveness). In Experiment 1, 135 participants across three different time points (June 2020-July 2021) viewed unedited faces and faces with masks, sunglasses, or both. Both masks and sunglasses similarly decreased matching performance. The effect of masks on social judgements varied depending on the judgement and whether the face was depicted with sunglasses. There was no effect of timepoint on any measure, suggesting that the effects of masks have not diminished. In Experiment 2, 12 individuals with developmental prosopagnosia (DP) and 10 super-recognisers (SRs) completed the same tasks. The effect of masks on identity matching was reduced in SRs, whereas the effects of masks and sunglasses for the DP group did not differ from controls. These findings indicate that face masks significantly affect face perception, depending on the availability of other facial information, and are not modified by exposure.
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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.