Perceiving masked faces

Psychologists agree that the human face is a rich source of social information: it captures our attention and provides a number of social cues (for example, about the person&s;s identity, emotion, and trustworthiness). But during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was common to have to keep the lower part of one&s;s face constantly covered with a medical face mask. This chapter discusses some insights gleaned from the psychological literature on the perception of the masked face, centering on the experiments conducted by my team, which focused on face detection, identity recognition, recognition of emotion, and impressions of trustworthiness.