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Effects of Masks Worn to Protect Against COVID-19 on the Perception of Facial Attractiveness

Wearing a sanitary mask tended, in the main, to reduce the wearer’s sense of perceived facial attractiveness before the COVID-19 epidemic. This phenomenon, termed the sanitary-mask effect, was explained using a two-factor model involving the occlusion of cues used for the judgment of attractiveness...

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Autores principales: Kamatani, Miki, Ito, Motohiro, Miyazaki, Yuki, Kawahara, Jun I.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8243111/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34262683
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/20416695211027920
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author Kamatani, Miki
Ito, Motohiro
Miyazaki, Yuki
Kawahara, Jun I.
author_facet Kamatani, Miki
Ito, Motohiro
Miyazaki, Yuki
Kawahara, Jun I.
author_sort Kamatani, Miki
collection PubMed
description Wearing a sanitary mask tended, in the main, to reduce the wearer’s sense of perceived facial attractiveness before the COVID-19 epidemic. This phenomenon, termed the sanitary-mask effect, was explained using a two-factor model involving the occlusion of cues used for the judgment of attractiveness and unhealthiness priming (e.g., presumed illness). However, these data were collected during the pre-COVID-19 period. Thus, in this study, we examined whether the COVID-19 epidemic changed the perceived attractiveness and healthiness when viewing faces with and without sanitary masks. We also used questionnaires to evaluate beliefs regarding mask wearers. We found that the perception of mask-worn faces differed before versus after the onset of the COVID-19 epidemic. Specifically, mask-wearing improved wearers’ sense of the attractiveness of faces, which were rated as less attractive when a mask was not worn after the onset of the COVID-19 epidemic. Furthermore, mask-worn faces were rated as healthier after the onset of the COVID-19. The proportion of respondents with negative associations regarding mask-wearing (e.g., unhealthiness) decreased relative to before the epidemic. We suggest that the weakening of this association altered the sanitary-mask effect with a relative emphasis on the occlusion component, reflecting the temporal impact of a global social incident (the COVID-19 epidemic) on the perception of facial attractiveness.
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spelling pubmed-82431112021-07-13 Effects of Masks Worn to Protect Against COVID-19 on the Perception of Facial Attractiveness Kamatani, Miki Ito, Motohiro Miyazaki, Yuki Kawahara, Jun I. Iperception Standard Article Wearing a sanitary mask tended, in the main, to reduce the wearer’s sense of perceived facial attractiveness before the COVID-19 epidemic. This phenomenon, termed the sanitary-mask effect, was explained using a two-factor model involving the occlusion of cues used for the judgment of attractiveness and unhealthiness priming (e.g., presumed illness). However, these data were collected during the pre-COVID-19 period. Thus, in this study, we examined whether the COVID-19 epidemic changed the perceived attractiveness and healthiness when viewing faces with and without sanitary masks. We also used questionnaires to evaluate beliefs regarding mask wearers. We found that the perception of mask-worn faces differed before versus after the onset of the COVID-19 epidemic. Specifically, mask-wearing improved wearers’ sense of the attractiveness of faces, which were rated as less attractive when a mask was not worn after the onset of the COVID-19 epidemic. Furthermore, mask-worn faces were rated as healthier after the onset of the COVID-19. The proportion of respondents with negative associations regarding mask-wearing (e.g., unhealthiness) decreased relative to before the epidemic. We suggest that the weakening of this association altered the sanitary-mask effect with a relative emphasis on the occlusion component, reflecting the temporal impact of a global social incident (the COVID-19 epidemic) on the perception of facial attractiveness. SAGE Publications 2021-06-27 /pmc/articles/PMC8243111/ /pubmed/34262683 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/20416695211027920 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Creative Commons CC BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Standard Article
Kamatani, Miki
Ito, Motohiro
Miyazaki, Yuki
Kawahara, Jun I.
Effects of Masks Worn to Protect Against COVID-19 on the Perception of Facial Attractiveness
title Effects of Masks Worn to Protect Against COVID-19 on the Perception of Facial Attractiveness
title_full Effects of Masks Worn to Protect Against COVID-19 on the Perception of Facial Attractiveness
title_fullStr Effects of Masks Worn to Protect Against COVID-19 on the Perception of Facial Attractiveness
title_full_unstemmed Effects of Masks Worn to Protect Against COVID-19 on the Perception of Facial Attractiveness
title_short Effects of Masks Worn to Protect Against COVID-19 on the Perception of Facial Attractiveness
title_sort effects of masks worn to protect against covid-19 on the perception of facial attractiveness
topic Standard Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8243111/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34262683
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/20416695211027920
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