Emotional reactions evoked by masks with an implied mouth

Wearing a mask often disrupts social interactions because of covering parts of facial features. A mask with a smiling mouth printed (smiling mask) is designed to overcome this problem. Here, we examined how wearing a smiling mask would evoke emotional impressions. We found that persons with a smiling mask were evaluated more unpleasantly and eerily than those with a typical cloth mask and without any masks (Experiments 1 and 3a). Moreover, we showed that persons with a transparent mask (i.e., a mask whose area around the mouth is transparent) were evaluated less unpleasantly and eerily than those with a smiling mask (Experiments 2 and 3b). Our findings suggest that realism inconsistency between facial features on the upper area and the printed mouth causes devaluation effects for persons with a smiling mask.