Interpreting emotional facial expressions (EFE) is fundamental in social cognition. In Western cultures, the eyes are a primary source of information for decoding emotions. However, when the eyes are inaccessible, whether obscured by dark glasses or closed, the perception and interpretation of EFE changes. While occluded eyes in both cases prevent direct visual access, closed eyes signal social disengagement, whereas dark glasses introduce ambiguity regarding the person's capacity to see.This raises the question: does the interpretation of EFE remain stable regardless of eye occlusion, or is there another level of appraisal? In this study, participants (N=34) viewed faces displaying anger, fear, happiness, and neutral expressions under three eye conditions: open, closed, and obscured by dark glasses. They rated the emotions on scales, and eye-tracking recorded eye fixation to assess attentional allocation to the eye region. Results showed that eye occlusion reduced emotion recognition, particularly for fear and anger, confirming that these emotions recognition rely on eye cues. Crucially, different occlusion types produced distinct effects: closed eyes led to a greater shift in emotion categorization than glasses (e.g. fearful faces being misinterpreted as expressions of pleasure). Fixation data showed reduction in time spent looking at the eye region when the eyes were occluded. Yet, the pattern is opposed to the behavioural results, suggesting that closed eyes don’t represent the absence of emotion but convey meaningful information. These findings provide evidence that eye perception plays a critical role in emotion recognition and attentional processing. They highlight how the perceived accessibility of another’s gaze influences social cognition, with implications for both models of emotion recognition and real-world interactions.