Social emotional processes during the third wave of COVID-19: Results from a close replication study in a Turkish sample


Altaytas A. F., Armagan I. C., Gulpinar A., Ozdemir S., Karakale O.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY, vol.58, no.5, pp.456-464, 2023 (SSCI) identifier identifier identifier

  • Publication Type: Article / Article
  • Volume: 58 Issue: 5
  • Publication Date: 2023
  • Doi Number: 10.1002/ijop.12921
  • Journal Name: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY
  • Journal Indexes: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus, Academic Search Premier, ASSIA, IBZ Online, Periodicals Index Online, Business Source Elite, Business Source Premier, Child Development & Adolescent Studies, Educational research abstracts (ERA), EMBASE, Linguistics & Language Behavior Abstracts, MEDLINE, MLA - Modern Language Association Database, Psycinfo, Public Affairs Index, SportDiscus
  • Page Numbers: pp.456-464
  • Keywords: COVID-19, Face masks, Social cognition, Emotion recognition, EYES, PERCEPTION, GENDER
  • Middle East Technical University Affiliated: Yes

Abstract

Until recently, for almost 3 years, we used face masks to protect against COVID-19. Face masks disrupted our perception of socially relevant information, and impacted our social judgements as a result of the new social norms around wearing masks imposed by the pandemic. To shed light on such pandemic-induced changes in social emotional processes, Calbi et al. analysed data from an Italian sample collected in Spring 2020. They assessed valence, social distance and physical distance ratings for neutral, happy and angry male and female faces covered with a scarf or a mask. A year later, we used the same stimuli to investigate the same measures in a Turkish sample. We found that females attributed more negative valence ratings than males to angry faces, and that angry and neutral faces of females were rated more negatively than those of males. Scarf stimuli were evaluated more negatively in terms of valence. Participants attributed greater distance to more negative faces (angry > neutral > happy) and to scarf than the mask stimuli. Also, females attributed greater social and physical distance than males. These results may be explained by gender-stereotypic socialisation processes, and changes in people's perception of health behaviours during the pandemic.