From Face-To-Face To Mask-To-Mask: How COVID-19 Changed Interpersonal Communication

"We gravitate to grins and giggles," the authors of How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age write. Nobody can deny the power of the facial expression that universally denotes friendliness and happiness, because "smiles send a message we like to receive".

In this fairly obscure 2011 follow-up to a famous original, Dale Carnegie "and associates" debate whether the smile can still be used as a powerful tool to influence others electronically and over distances — through emails and text messages. Their answer was, by the way, a tentative "yes", but only if you have writing and interpersonal skills, or sacrifice your professionalism to include an emoticon in your messages.

Just how are face masks influencing our daily interactions, in societies where nearly everyone wears them in public spaces? I, for one, have been read as both aggressive and anxious in the same sitting with a mask on, and though I'm naturally way too loud, I've been asked to repeat myself more often than I can count since the pandemic started and face masks became part of our daily routines. 

How important are facial expressions for effective in-person communication?

You've heard the stats — humans, on average, derive only seven percent of the total meaning of a message from its verbal contents, 38 percent from the intonation and volume of a voice, and a shocking 55 percent from facial expressions. Though the idea that facial expression makes up over half of the in-person communication we receive from others came from outdated 1960s studies and has been more or less debunked, one thing is clear.

Most folks do look to facial expressions to decipher what someone is really thinking or feeling, and the COVID-19 pandemic has slashed our access to those facial expressions in half, at least in public spaces where people wear masks. 

People have, as a species, relied on facial expressions to communicate their emotions and intentions for a very long time — thousands of years, or even beyond. Some facial expressions have been found to be universal, and independent of culture. They are happiness, sadness, disgust, surprise, anger, and fear. 

Eyes, which would probably extend to eyebrows and foreheads, still beat the lower half of the face now so often masked in terms of communicative value, but less so in isolation. A genuine "Duchenne smile", the kind of smile that makes people squint, is impossible to fake — but if the recipient of your "costs nothing but gives much" smile instead thinks you're shocked, concentrating, or disgusted instead, you have a problem. 

How do face masks impact communication?

Research has already been published on the topic of how face masks impact — or should we say "mask"? — interpersonal communication, and a fascinating study suggests that both adults and children are slower to accurately identify emotions in people whose mouths aren't visible.

"Happiness and disgust are not as likely recognized in those wearing masks that hide the mouth", the study concludes, while fear and sadness are easier to "read" because those emotions lead to more action in the eye region. Anger, too, is harder to pinpoint when someone's wearing a face mask, and that can lead to some tense situations in already very polarized times. 

Another thing that we miss out on when most people wear face masks is facial mimicry, or the tendency to copy the expressions of the people we talk to. This process can be an important bonding exercise, and COVID-19 may rob us of it. 

Two groups of people may be more hindered by face masks than others — deaf people and language learners. 

While deaf people who largely rely on lip reading have called attention to the fact that the pandemic has taken away their primary means of listening to others, and face masks with a clear "window" to facilitate lip reading were developed, I'm sure I'm not the only one who has never seen such masks for sale or being worn. This leaves an already isolated community even more so, and deaf advocates have called the lack of recognition they received disappointing.

My expat colleague who's still learning the language of his host country, meanwhile, reported that making out people's intentions and words, all at the same time, is an incredible challenge as well. 

Would our communication styles change if masks became a permanent fixture?

What if COVID-19 were to still, in one form or another, rage the planet in 20 years? Would the children born in 2020, growing up with face masks, develop new ways to read human emotions? Would the way in which they functioned be alien to, say, people born 100 years earlier? Would they even make facial expressions the way most people are used to today?

Here, we can perhaps learn from two other groups — blind and autistic people. 

While there is no consensus and individual differences have been observed, there is research to show that at least some blind people do not produce spontaneous facial expressions the way many sighted folks do. The fact that they, themselves, get no information from others' faces has got to have a lot to do with this. 

Autistic people, too, often get less information from facial expressions than do neurotypicals. One study reported that autistic people found it harder to read fear, anger, and disgust on the faces of those without autism, but found happiness, sadness, and surprise easier to recognize. Interestingly, those are some of the same emotions reportedly made harder to decipher in people wearing masks. 

Where do autistic and blind people get their cues, if not so much from facial expressions? The answer would, obviously, lie in a combination of the words someone speaks and perhaps the tone in which they do so. This information is available to sighted, non-autistic, but hearing and fluent speakers of the language being used, too. 

COVID-19 has shaken the world, and that fact has affected us all in different ways as well as to varying degrees. The pandemic has accelerated polarization that had already been brewing for quite some time, and I for one wouldn't be surprised if the anti-mask messages we're hearing from many quarters are partially caused by distress resulting from quite literally obstructed interpersonal communication.