The impact of COVID-19 concerns on perceiving others' faces

Unlike most infectious diseases, COVID-19 is characterised by an absence of facial disease-signalling cues. Yet, it is still unclear whether it has influenced face perception. Understanding this may help clarify if and how our motivation toward social interactions is conditional on situational pathogen threats. The present study investigated if priming disease concerns about COVID-19 would change people's perception of neutral faces on perceived disease, social discomfort and arousal elicited by such faces; this condition was compared with other infectious/non-infectious diseases and a non-disease priming condition. One-hundred sixty-six participants recruited nationally performed the online task. When compared with the non-disease condition, participants primed for COVID-19 perceived faces as sicker and tended to view them as eliciting more social discomfort; no difference occurred in arousal. No other difference was found between conditions. These findings suggest that the pandemic context can shape how we perceive others' apparent sickness. Overall, these might reflect adaptations intertwined with the behavioural immune system's defence mechanisms.