Our ability to recognize faces is diminished by wearing a mask, and this affects the quality of our relationships.
- Wearing a mask interferes with the ability to recognize a face
- It does not allow to interpret emotions and intentions
The Covid-19 epidemic is turning our lives upside down, and probably more than we suspect. Wearing a mask would have an impact on our relationship with others. A study co-carried out by researchers from York University in Toronto and that of Ben Gurion in Israel shows that our ability to recognize faces is disturbed by masks in our daily lives. In the review Naturethe researchers look back on the experiment they conducted to reach this conclusion.
A greatly diminished capacity
“Masks are an essential tool in our efforts to reduce the transmission of Covid-19, insists Erez Freud, author of the study. It is important to understand how they affect our ability to perceive, i.e. face recognition.“To achieve this, he recruited, with his team, 496 adults. All of them answered an online questionnaire, the main tool of the research. First, images of people they did not know were shown to them, then they had to try to recognize them. The experiment was carried out with masked and unmasked faces. The researchers used a technique for measuring the ability to recognize faces, called “Cambridge Face Memory Test“. They find that the mask strongly reduces this ability: the participants had results similar to those of people suffering from prosopagnosia, a disorder in the ability to recognize faces also called “face blindness“.
An impact on our social relations
“The perception of faces is based on a holistic analysis, that is to say a treatment of the face as a whole, adds Erez Freud. For masked faces, this mode of perception is not as effective.“The researcher observes that the mask forces us to process each facial feature separately, which decreases the quality of perception. However, the ability to recognize a face allows us not only to identify people, but also to interpret emotions and intentions.For the scientific team, the impact of wearing a mask on this ability could have consequences for our social interactions.
A form of anonymization
For several months, several social science researchers have been interested in the impact of the mask on our lives. In May 2020, David Le Breton, professor of sociology and anthropology, pointed out that this piece of fabric makes us almost anonymous. “It damages social relations and the pleasure we have in exchanging with others.“, he confided to France News. According to him, the mask should be one of the first things we will give up when the health situation is under control.
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