The Contribution of the Lower Third of the Face to Perceived Age: Do Masks Make You Appear Younger?

Impact of Mask-Wearing on Public Attitudes, Perceptions, and Interest in Rhinoplasty During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Background

This study aimed to investigate the influence of mask use on attitudes, perceptions, and interests in rhinoplasty during the COVID-19 pandemic in Saudi Arabia. Our objective is to identify the factors influencing public attitudes, perceptions, and interest in undergoing rhinoplasty during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the elements that altered individuals' decisions regarding the procedure.

Methods

Epi Info software was used to calculate sample size, and a pilot study confirmed the feasibility of the research. Data analysis incorporated both descriptive and inferential statistics, with results illustrated in tables and graphs. Participant privacy was ensured throughout.

Results

Most participants were women (81.7%), 18-24 years, single, and from the eastern region. Only 16.3% believed rhinoplasty is exclusive to women, 15.1% considered it solely cosmetic, and 50.3% thought it should be restricted to adults. Among 25 participants (3.9%) who had rhinoplasty, 64% made the decision independently, whereas acquaintances influenced the rest. Additionally, 62.8% disagreed with the notion that rhinoplasty is unnecessary while wearing masks, indicating a preference for the procedure even with mask use. A χ2 test revealed significant associations between rhinoplasty preference during mask usage and sex (P = 0.019), gender exclusivity (P < 0.001), cosmetic purpose (P = 0.033), cultural discouragement (P < 0.001), and surgeon type (P < 0.001).

Conclusions

Mask-wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic led to an increased interest in rhinoplasty. However, further research is needed to determine if this interest in rhinoplasty translates into an increase in surgical procedures being performed.

Smiling makes you look older, even when you wear a mask: the effect of face masks on age perception

The widespread use of face masks in the era of the Covid-19 pandemic has promoted research on their effect on the perception and recognition of faces. There is growing evidence that masks hinder the recognition of identity and expression, as well as the interpretation of speech from facial cues. It is less clear whether and in what manner masks affect the perception of age from facial cues. Recent research has emphasized the role of the upper region of the face, a part not covered by a mask, in the evaluation of age. For example, smile-related wrinkles in the region of the eyes make smiling faces appear older than neutral faces of the same individuals (the aging effect of smiling, AES). In two experiments, we tested the effect of face masks on age evaluations of neutral and smiling faces in a range of different age groups from 20 to 80 years. The results showed that smiling faces were perceived as older than neutral faces even when individuals were wearing a face mask—and there was no effect of masks on bias in age evaluations. Additional analyses showed reduced accuracy in age evaluations for smiling compared to neutral faces and for masked compared to unmasked faces. The results converge on previous studies emphasizing the importance of the upper region of the face in evaluations of age.

Surgical face masks do not impair the decoding of facial expressions of negative affect more severely in older than in younger adults

Surgical face masks reduce the spread of airborne pathogens but also disturb the flow of information between individuals. The risk of getting seriously ill after infection with SARS-COV-2 during the present COVID-19 pandemic amplifies with age, suggesting that face masks should be worn especially during face-to-face contact with and between older people. However, the ability to accurately perceive and understand communication signals decreases with age, and it is currently unknown whether face masks impair facial communication more severely in older people. We compared the impact of surgical face masks on dynamic facial emotion recognition in younger (18–30 years) and older (65–85 years) adults (N = 96) in an online study. Participants watched short video clips of young women who facially expressed anger, fear, contempt or sadness. Faces of half of the women were covered by a digitally added surgical face mask. As expected, emotion recognition accuracy declined with age, and face masks reduced emotion recognition accuracy in both younger and older participants. Unexpectedly, the effect of face masks did not differ between age groups. Further analyses showed that masks also reduced the participants’ overall confidence in their emotion judgements, but not their performance awareness (the difference between their confidence ratings for correct and incorrect responses). Again, there were no mask-by-age interactions. Finally, data obtained with a newly developed questionnaire (attitudes towards face masks, atom) suggest that younger and older people do not differ in how much they feel impaired in their understanding of other people’s emotions by face masks or how useful they find face masks in confining the COVID-19 pandemic. In sum, these findings do not provide evidence that the impact of face masks on the decoding of facial signals is disproportionally larger in older people.