De invloed van een niqab op het herkennen van gezichtsexpressies

People have argued that headscarves hamper communication and the recognition of emotions. Research shows that the coverage of face parts disturbs the holistic processing of faces and may hide important expressive cues such as the mouth. In addition, the Islamic veil can be perceived as a strong out-group cue for non-Islamics. These negative feelings associated with out-group signals like headscarves seem to cause most difficulties in emotion recognition, not face coverage. Research shows that fear is recognized better from women wearing a niqāb than from women wearing a cap and a shawl, whereas the opposite was observed for happy expressions. These findings can be explained by humans’ general negative bias in the perception of facial expressions from out-group members and positive bias towards in-group members.