The impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on explicit and implicit attitudes towards black sanitary mask wearers

Abstract

Pre-COVID-19 epidemic studies found that wearing a sanitary mask negatively impacted perceived facial attractiveness. In particular, people demonstrated more negative explicit or implicit attitudes toward wearers of sanitary masks when the masks were black rather than white. The present study examined whether changes in social behavior in response to the COVID-19 epidemic, including the prevalent use of sanitary masks, might alter explicit and/or implicit attitudes toward wearers of black sanitary masks. We measured explicit (Study 1) and implicit attitudes (Study 3) and facial attractiveness (Study 2) of males wearing black or white sanitary masks. The results revealed that attitudes toward wearers of black sanitary masks were more positive than those measured pre-epidemic. Regardless of mask color, explicit attractiveness rating scores for low-attractiveness faces tended to increase after the epidemic. However, no such improvement was observed for high- and middle-attractiveness faces. There was also no change in implicit attitudes measured by the implicit association test. These results suggest that the COVID-19 epidemic has reduced explicit negative attitudes toward wearers of black sanitary masks.