Abstract
Fifty-one adults evaluated visually-perceived emotions from 32 masks. These masks (held in the collection of the Kentucky Museum, located on the campus of Western Kentucky University) were created by artists from a wide variety of cultures spanning multiple continents. Each participant evaluated every mask along six dimensions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. No previous scientific study has ever studied the general effectiveness of masks (other than Japanese Noh masks) in producing perceptions of human emotion. The results showed that the masks were effective in producing substantial variations in perceived happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. The ability of the masks to produce effective perceptions of emotion was due to the artists’ inclusion of facial features that reliably signal emotions in everyday life.
Highlights
Masks have been used for important religious, societal, and cultural purposes for at least ten thousand years [1,2]
In the Pacific Northwest of North America [7], masks were utilized at judicial proceedings and were employed for crowd control and the maintenance of public order
The purpose of the current study was to rectify this lack of information and experimentally investigate emotion perception using a large number of masks obtained from many parts of the world (e.g., Bahamas, Bali, Brazil, Comoros Islands, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvadore, Ghana, Greenland, Guatamala, Japan, Mexico, Paraguay, Senegal, Thailand, & Venezuela)
Summary
Masks have been used for important religious, societal, and cultural purposes for at least ten thousand years [1,2]. Masks were used to promote the fertility of agricultural crops, and to facilitate the healing of illness. They were employed at important personal events, such as birth, initiation into manhood, advancement in rank, and death. In Borneo [6], the functions of masks were similar to those employed in Africa: they were used to invoke protection for agricultural crops, to invoke protection from disease, were used at funerals and marriages, and for comedy. In the Pacific Northwest of North America [7], masks were utilized at judicial proceedings and were employed for crowd control and the maintenance of public order. Masks were used at important social events from birth to death (e.g., birth, naming, marriage, illness, remembrances of dead family members)
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