New research has found that wearing a mask tends to increase eye involvement when smiling. The findings appear in the journal Scientific Reports. “As almost everyone in Japan is wearing a face mask during the COVID era and we wanted to know if wearing a mask has any effect on the face,” said study author Shuntaro Okazaki, a senior researcher at the MIRAI Technology Institute. “I have previously studied social communication, so the first thing I wanted to know was whether the mask interferes with communication via facial expression or not.” Okazaki and his colleagues used electromyography (EMG)…