21,000 people have already participated in a viral survey on social networks promoted by a research team from the University of Valencia, the UJI and Pompeu Fabra University.
Researchers from the University of Valencia, the Universitat Jaume I and the Pompeu Fabra University have promoted a joint study on social networks to analyse the impact of the use of face masks on the perception of emotions through the survey "Are you able to recognise emotions with and without a face mask?". The challenge that has gone viral and in which 21,000 people have already participated.
The research team formed by Diana Castilla López (University of Valencia) and Azucena García Palacios, Carlos Suso Ribera (Universitat Jaume I) and Isabel Ortigosa Beltrán (Pompeu Fabra University) will study to what extent face masks diminish the ability to perceive emotions in others.
To do this, they have carried out a survey in the form of a game that, in less than five minutes, analyses the extent to which the mask is a barrier to perceiving emotions. It shows various photographs of people with and without masks and at the end shows the degree of success, so that each person can see the difference.
The study aims to investigate which emotions are most impaired by the deprivation of full-face visibility, and to what extent this limitation affects emotional perception at different ages. "Emotions connect us to the world, and are present throughout our lives, giving us information about what is going on around us and telling us how to act. Emotion is an essential factor for social interaction. We use different sources to recognise emotions, but one of them is facial expression. This led us to ask ourselves whether the prolonged use of face masks could alter emotional perception," says Diana Castilla, main researcher of this study and lecturer at the University of Valencia.
Azucena García Palacios, director of Labpsitec at the Universitat Jaume I, where this study has been promoted, points out that the study "has involved many adults, but we would like to obtain more data from younger children (4-12 years old), as the preliminary data seem very interesting".
The study is aimed at the whole population from the age of 4 to 99, although children must be helped by their parents.
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