Masking the truth: the impact of face masks on deception detection

ABSTRACT

Because of the pandemic, face masks have become ubiquitous in social interactions, but it remains unclear how face masks influence the ability to discriminate between truthful and deceptive statements. The current study manipulated the presence of face masks, statement veracity, statement valence (positive or negative), and whether the statements had been practiced or not. Despite participants’ expectations, face masks generally did not impair detection accuracy. However, participants were more accurate when judging negatively valenced statements when the speaker was not wearing a face mask. Participants were also more likely to believe positively rather than negatively valenced statements.

KEYWORDS:

• deception
• face mask
• veracity assessments
• social interactions
• COVID-19

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Alan Harrison for providing feedback on an early draft of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

All authors contributed throughout various stages of the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

Consent for publication

The current study was evaluated on its ethics and consent and were approved by the IRB Board at Sam Houston State University. All participants consented to their data being used in any published documents.

Data availability statement

Can be found at the following address: https://osf.io/84hyn/?view_only=de2cffd4d5bd445c8968b21dcf70262b.

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2023.2195092

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Daniella K. Cash

Daniella Cash, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at Sam Houston State University. She graduated from Louisiana State University and her research interests focus on the interplay between social and cognitive psychology within the legal system. This includes factors such as eyewitness identification, jury decision-making, deception detection, and the recognition of grooming behaviors.

Laura A. Pazos

Laura Pazos is a first year PhD student in the Interdisciplinary Social Psychology PhD Program at University of Nevada, Reno. She received her MA from Sam Houston State University and her B.S. from the University of Southern Mississippi. Her research interests are in perceptions of legal and social issues, such as sexual violence, abortion, and gender identity.