Research done before the pandemic found that wearing medical face masks made people less attractive because they were linked to sickness or disease. Dr. Michael Lewis, a psychology reader at Cardiff University, said this: “Our study suggests faces are considered most attractive when covered by medical face masks.”
This may be because we’re used to healthcare workers wearing blue masks and now we associate these with people in caring or medical professions. At a time when we feel vulnerable, we may find the wearing of medical masks reassuring and so feel more positive towards the wearer”. The first part of the study was done in February 2021 when people had been wearing masks for while.
Seeing a person in a mask doesn’t make us think, “That person has a disease, I need to stay away.”
Women were asked to rate male faces on a scale of 1 to 10. The faces were shown without a mask, with a plain cloth mask, a blue medical face mask, or a plain black book covering the area a face mask would hide. Forty-three women were questioned in the study. Those wearing cloth masks were thought to be more attractive than those without masks or whose faces were partly hidden by the book. “The results run counter to the pre-pandemic research where it was thought masks made people think about disease and the person should be avoided,” said Lewis. “People thought masks made people think about disease, so they should stay away from the person who wore them.”
Also, Lewis said, masks could make people look better because they made people’s eyes stand out. A lot of people look more attractive when they cover up one side or the other of their face. That’s because the brain fills in the gaps and makes the eyes look bigger.
