Configural Face Processing: How Face Coverings Impact Social Judgements in the COVID-19 Era

The behavioral immune system has been implicated in both adaptive and maladaptive social judgements and behaviors affecting a social environment (Murray & Schaller 2016). As norms change in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, how will covering the nose and mouth—with face coverings as a preventative measure to limit COVID-19 community spread—impact social environments? The study seeks to investigate whether face coverings influence affect, social comfort, and judgments of trust. Undergraduate college students were shown images of target faces with and without face coverings covering the eyes, the nose and mouth, or both. Results suggest that observing a surgical mask which covers the nose and mouth on target faces does not affect fear, social distancing, or trust