Want to Make a Good First Impression? Wear a Face Mask!

If you've ever been on Disneyland's Indiana Jones ride, Temple of the Forbidden Eye, you know not to look into the eyes of the temple god Mara—if you want to make it out in one piece that is. But if you did gaze into the eyes of Mara, what would your first impressions of her be like?

Ok, maybe you wouldn't view an ancient god who is trying to trap you in a crumbling temple as particularly warm, but the research I'm conducting at the University of Maine with my colleagues is showing that gazing into the eyes of a stranger does in fact make them appear warmer and more competent! And wearing a face mask is one way that you can get others to look into your eyes more.

How Face Masks Are Impacting Judgments of Others

In March 2020, our social world became completely different as the World Health Organization declared coronavirus (COVID-19) a pandemic. Almost overnight, people began routinely using masks to cover the entire lower half of their faces, leaving only their eyes exposed. Although this was only intended to prevent the transmission of the widespread COVID-19 virus, it also provided psychologists, including myself, a unique opportunity to investigate how first impressions of strangers may be altered by the presence of a mask.

My colleagues and I did our studies from June 2020 through February 2022 to test how face masks impact first impressions of those wearing them. We first recruited volunteers from around the world to upload two photographs of themselves—one wearing a face mask and one without—to a database we created for this project. For our first two studies, participants from the U.S. viewed and rated photographs of individuals either wearing a face mask or not wearing a face mask. Participants were asked to imagine that they were passing by these people in a grocery store, and to rate their first impressions of these individuals' warmth and competence—the first two impressions individuals generally form when seeing someone for the first time. Participants then answered a series of questions about themselves, such as their political affiliation and how much they believed in the effectiveness of face masks for protection against the transmission of COVID-19.

In both studies, strangers wearing masks were seen as warmer and more competent than the same strangers without face masks. This held regardless of the viewers' political affiliation and regardless of whether they believed in the effectiveness of face masks.

Covering the Mouth, but Enhancing the Eyes

We suspected that these results might have been due to masks enhancing the eyes of those who wear them. The eyes really can be the "window to the soul," as researchers have shown that the eyes can signal valuable information about a person, such as their willingness to form social bonds with you, and their trustworthiness. Gazing into others' eyes also helps you remember their faces better, and helps you better recognize what emotions they are expressing. Therefore, we conducted two more studies to see if first impressions of warmth and competence would increase by simply directing participants' attention to the eyes of others.

For our third study, participants viewed the photographs from our prior studies, but we cropped the bottom half of faces from the top of the nose down out of the picture. For our fourth study, participants were shown the photographs of strangers without face masks and were told to simply gaze into their eyes before making any first impression judgments about them. Just as earlier participants did for individuals wearing masks, these participants rated strangers as warmer and more competent when viewing photos of them with only their eyes showing, or when specifically instructed to look into strangers' eyes, in comparison to neutral photos of strangers without masks.

Forming Positive First Impressions of Others

We are currently living in a time of extreme disconnect, where massive transitions to working from home and rises in smartphone addiction are just some of the factors that appear to be keeping people apart. We find it encouraging that finding ways to look strangers in the eyes more often may actually foster a more positive first impression of them, potentially leading to more satisfying social interactions. As face mask regulations are being pulled back in many places across the globe and we can no longer simply rely on these pieces of clothing to bring out our eyes, taking a moment to look into the eyes of the person who takes your coffee order in the morning may be more impactful than you think.


For Further Reading

Stosic, M. D., Helwig, S., & Ruben, M. A. (2022). More than meets the eyes: Bringing attention to the eyes increases first impressions of warmth and competence. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672221128114

Kawakami, K., Williams, A., Sidhu, D., Choma, B. L., Rodriguez-Bailón, R., Cañadas, E., ... & Hugenberg, K. (2014). An eye for the I: Preferential attention to the eyes of ingroup members. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 107(1), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036838


Morgan Stosic is a PhD candidate at the University of Maine. Her research interests include the expression and perception of nonverbal behavior, with a focus on how individuals use nonverbal information to make first-impression judgments of others.

Emotions Under Masks

Over the past two years, the way in which we interact with one another has changed. During the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, social interactions were largely relegated to little boxes on a computer screen and precious phone calls with family and friends. Even the relatively few in-person interactions many of us had during the height of the pandemic were very different than before. Whether it was running into a colleague during a short trip to pick up necessities, or seeing a friend on a more recent adventure outside of the house, our social interactions over the past couple of years have felt lacking.

While social distancing and mask-wearing have helped keep us and our loved ones safe, these measures also have had additional effects on our ability to communicate. Some may have felt that their ability to decode facial expressions has been impaired by masks.

Other people believe that the eyes alone are sufficient to interpret how people feel. This sentiment has been canonized in popular culture with sayings like the eyes are the window to the soul. Likewise, recently a researcher at the University of Plymouth demonstrated that people can recognize facial expressions from only the eyes at a level better than sheer guessing. Given this evidence, we set out to test whether face masks do impair the ability to understand others' facial expressions of emotion.

Communicating Under Masks

We know that a large amount of communication occurs through nonverbal cues. Facial expressions help communicate complex feelings and ideas beyond what is typically communicated with words. Facial expressions help us understand what others are saying, how they are feeling, and what they intend to do. However, face masks conceal some of the facial muscles used to communicate emotions.

A researcher from the University of Bamberg in Germany was the first to show that masks worn during the pandemic reduce the ability to categorize emotional facial expressions and that these expressions were often mistaken for neutral, or no emotion. However, they used still images of facial expressions, which lack some of the communicative signals typically displayed in the real-life movement of faces.

We set out to do a more realistic study. Participants in our study viewed short video clips of people expressing happiness, sadness, anger, and surprise with and without face masks commonly seen during the pandemic (N95s, blue surgical masks, and cloth masks). They then reported the degree to which the person in the video was expressing each of the four emotions.

What we found was that masked faces communicate less of the intended emotion and more of the three other irrelevant emotions. For example, unmasked expressions of sadness clearly communicated sadness; however, a masked face expressing sadness communicated less sadness and more of the other emotions. This impairment was also greater for expressions that are typically displayed using more of the muscles in the lower part of the face (namely, happiness and disgust).

Face Masks, COVID-19, and Beyond

While many people have largely left their masks at home, others report that they intend to continue wearing masks in the future. This may become more common in places that are again seeing rising COVID-19 cases. Likewise, new COVID-19 variants and future epi- and pandemics may again require the use of face masks during social interactions. In some countries, mask-wearing was already a common practice even before the pandemic, and doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals routinely wear face masks to prevent the spread of disease.

People who continue to wear masks on the job or when venturing out of the house should be aware of the loss of information usually communicated by the face. People may not be able to read our emotions as easily as they can when we're maskless. Misunderstandings or awkward interactions could result.

Luckily, a researcher from Sapienza University of Rome and his colleagues found that masks with transparent areas covering the mouth largely eliminate the negative effects of mask-wearing on communication. However, those of us who intend to continue wearing the more common cloth, N95, and KN95 face masks should consider supplementing our communication through routes not impaired by face masks. It never hurts to just tell someone how you feel, at least until we can all leave our masks at home. 


For Further Reading

Langbehn, A. T., Yermol, D. A., Zhao, F., Thorstenson, C. A., & Niedenthal, P. M. (2022). Wearing N95, surgical, and cloth face masks compromises the perception of emotion. Affective Science, 3, 105-117. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-021-00097-z

Brooks, J. T., & Butler, J. C. (2021). Effectiveness of mask wearing to control community spread of SARS-CoV-2. JAMA. 325(10), 998-999. https://10.1001/jama20.21.1505


Andrew Langbehn is a graduate student at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His research interests are focused on the experience and communication of emotions.