Influence of child and adult faces with face masks on emotion perception and facial mimicry

Emotional mimicry, the imitation of others’ emotion expressions, is related to increased interpersonal closeness and better interaction quality. Yet, little research has focused on the effect of face masks on emotional mimicry and none on (masked) child faces. To address this gap, we conducted an online experiment (N = 235, German sample, adult perceivers). Masks reduced emotion recognition accuracy for all expressions, except in the case of anger in masked child faces, where perceived anger was even increased. Perceived interpersonal closeness was reduced for masked happy and sad faces. For both child and adult expressers, masks reduced facial mimicry of happy expressions, with no mask effects for sadness and anger expression. A stronger mask effect on facial happiness mimicry of child faces was mediated by the degree of emotion recognition accuracy. Smiles shown by masked children were not recognized well, likely due to the absence of wrinkles around the eyes in child faces. Independent of masks, sadness shown by children was mimicked even more strongly than when shown by adults. These results provide evidence for facial mimicry of child expressions by adult perceivers and show that the effects of face masks on emotion communication may vary when children wear them.