<p>Research has shown that people poorly recognize masked facial expressions. In the present study, we were interested in the effects of background scenery on people’s needs for contextual information and confidence in interpretation to make emotional judgments. In two experiments, we investigated the context effects on emotion understanding. Participants rated their need for contextual information, confidence in interpretation, and desire for affiliation when looking at masked facial expressions. In Study 1, participants looked at 12 facial expressions with or without a background scene. In Study 2, we manipulated the congruence of background scenes and facial emotions. We consistently found that highly confident participants reported higher desire for affiliation with the target. In sum, our results suggest that people use contextual information to interpret partially covered facial expressions, but they are not aware of the context effect.</p>