Face masks present a new challenge to face identification (here matching) and emotion recognition in Western cultures. Here, we present the results of three experiments that test the effect of masks, and also the effect of sunglasses (an occlusion that individuals tend to have more experienced with) on (i) familiar face matching, (ii) unfamiliar face matching and (iii) emotion categorization. Occlusion reduced accuracy in all three tasks, with most errors in the mask condition; however, there was little difference in performance for faces in masks compared with faces in sunglasses. Super-recognizers, people who are highly skilled at matching unconcealed faces, were impaired by occlusion, but at the group level, performed with higher accuracy than controls on all tasks. Results inform psychology theory with implications for everyday interactions, security and policing in a mask-wearing society.

口罩对西方文化中的面部识别（这里是匹配）和情感识别提出了新的挑战。在这里，我们展示了三个实验的结果，测试口罩的效果，以及太阳镜（人们往往更有经验的遮挡物）对（i）熟悉的面部匹配，（ii）不熟悉的面部匹配和（ iii) 情绪分类。遮挡降低了所有三项任务的准确性，其中掩模条件中的错误最多；然而，与戴墨镜的人脸相比，戴口罩的人脸的表现几乎没有差异。超级识别者是那些非常擅长匹配未隐藏的面孔的人，他们受到遮挡的影响，但在群体层面上，在所有任务上都比对照组表现得更准确。研究结果为心理学理论提供了信息，对戴口罩社会的日常互动、安全和治安具有影响。