According to a new study from USC and California State University, Northridge, wearing face masks can make it harder for other people of all ages to recognize emotions. More specifically, it is difficult to read the expressions of sadness.
Parents experiencing high stress and depression symptoms expend more mental effort to recognize sad emotions behind masks, indicating stress heightens this difficulty. MRI scans revealed increased brain activity in specific regions associated with emotional processing in fathers and their children, highlighting the neural mechanisms behind this challenge.
Yael Waizman, a doctoral student in the Department of Psychology at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, said, “Masks obscure the key emotional cues that human interaction relies on, making it harder to connect and communicate in the ways we’re accustomed to and requiring us to adapt how we read and respond to others.”
“For kids, it’s essential to be mindful of their emotional cues when wearing face masks, as children learn by observing and modeling behaviors. This can be particularly challenging for stressed fathers, who may need extra support in helping their children recognize and express emotions effectively.”
Researchers uncover a circuit for sadness in the human brain
The study involved three diverse groups: 30 children who began school during the COVID-19 pandemic and their 31 fathers from a longitudinal study at USC’s NEST Lab, and 119 undergraduate students recruited through Cal State Northridge.
Senior author Darby Saxbe, a professor of psychology at USC Dornsife and principal investigator of the NEST Lab, said, “Fathers make key contributions to parenting, and understanding how they process emotion can tell us more about how they might model empathy for their kids.”
Participants identified emotions like sadness, fear, or anger from images of masked and unmasked faces. The study included lab visits and MRI scans for 41 participants (23 fathers and 18 children), while 20 others completed tasks without scans.
Fathers also completed mental health surveys, and 119 college students performed the task virtually. Results showed masked faces were harder to recognize across all age groups, especially for sadness, both behaviorally and in brain activity.
Emotions like anger and sadness may cause pain as well as being a result of it
Waizman, who works in Saxbe’s NEST Lab, said, “When responding to masked faces, we observed increased activity in brain regions associated with decoding facial expressions, emotion recognition, and social cognition compared to unmasked faces.”
“Sad faces, in particular, required more brain resources to interpret, with heightened activation in areas like the frontal-parietal gyri and the insula— regions critical for understanding and processing others’ emotions.”
“Because sadness often prompts us to seek support and connection, it’s crucial to ensure that masks don’t interfere with those meaningful interactions.”
Fathers with higher stress or depressive symptoms required more brain effort to recognize sad faces behind masks, showing increased activity in emotion-processing brain regions. This suggests stress impairs emotional cue recognition.
Saxbe said, “We know that stress can affect our ability to empathize with others, which is an important part of parenting. Managing stress can help us read each other’s emotions better.”
Waizman said, “Masks are essential in many settings, including health care, schools, and public spaces, to protect public health, but they also complicate how we connect with others. This raises important questions about how we can offer the support people need when the emotional cues we depend on are concealed.”
“Because sadness often prompts us to seek support and connection, it’s crucial to ensure that masks don’t interfere with those meaningful interactions.”
“By raising awareness and encouraging attentiveness to other cues, we can protect our social-emotional connections while maintaining the safety masks provide.”
Journal Reference:
- Waizman, Y., Vaccaro, A. G., Newsome, P., Aviv, E. C., León, G. A., Berzenski, S. R., & Saxbe, D. E. (2024). Behavioral and neural evidence for difficulty recognizing masked emotional faces. Emotion. DOI: 10.1037/emo0001444