Eyes Wide Shut: The Impact of Eye Visibility on Facial Emotional Recognition - ESCAN Version

The ability to interpret emotional facial expressions is a central emotional skill in social cognition. In Western cultures, the eyes are one of the central sources of information for perceiving these expressions. However, the inability to perceive the eyes can lead to different interpretations; eyes obscured (e.g., by dark glasses) may see, whereas closed eyes surely cannot; but in both cases, they are inaccessible to our perception. Thus, do we interpret facial expressions similarly, independently of the eyes’ accessibility ? Or is our appraisal dependent on how we represent what the others can see? To investigate this question, we exposed 50 participants to images of emotional faces (anger, fear, happiness) and neutral expressions with open, closed, or obscured eyes (by dark glasses), and asked them to report on discrete emotion scales the facial expressions they perceive. Overall, participants identified the expected emotions, but the patterns of recognition for the eyes condition differed. Anger and fear expressions were recognised better when eyes were open, then behind glasses, and finally with closed eyes. Happiness on the other hand was not different through conditions. Based on previous literature, we know that the eyes area is central for anger and fear recognition, while it is not for happiness, explaining the results. Next steps will however focus on the divergence between closed eyes and hidden-by-glasses eyes, to understand why this difference occur.