Masked face is looking at me: Face mask increases the feeling of being looked at during the COVID-19 pandemic

BACKGROUND: As the COVID-19 global pandemic unfolded, governments recommended wearing face masks as a protective measure. Recent studies have found that a face mask influences perception; but how it affects social perception, especially the judgment of being looked at, is still unknown. This study investigated how wearing a mask influences the judgment of gaze direction by conducting a cone of direct gaze (CoDG) task. METHODS: In Experiment 1, three types of masked faces were considered to investigate whether the effect of masks on CoDG is modulated by mask types. Experiment 2 was to further validate the results of Experiment 1 by adding a learning phase to help participants better distinguish N95 and surgical masks. Furthermore, to investigate whether the effect of masks derives from its social significance, a face with only the eye-region (a mouth-cut face) was used as the stimuli in Experiment 3. RESULTS: The results of Experiment 1 found that wearing masks widens the CoDG, irrespective of the mask type. Experiment 2 replicated the results of Experiment 1. Experiment 3 found that the CoDG of N95-masked faces was wider than the mouth-cut and non-masked faces, while no significant difference existed between the CoDG of mouth-cut and non-masked faces, illustrating that the influence of wearing masks on CoDG was due to high-level social significance rather than low-level facial feature information. CONCLUSION: The results show that face mask increases the feeling of being looked at during the COVID-19 Pandemic. The present findings are of significance for understanding the impact of wearing masks on human social cognition in the context of COVID-19.