Aggravated by the holdouts who keep wearing face masks despite mounting evidence that they're essentially useless against Covid-19? Maybe you should be a little grateful.

According to findings published at Frontiers in Psychology, people who consider themselves less attractive are more likely to continue wearing face masks.

"Our findings suggest that mask-wearing can shift from being a self-protection measure during the COVID-19 pandemic to a self-presentation tactic in the post-pandemic era."

The findings spring from a trio of studies using American subjects, conducted by researchers at Korea's Seoul National University. The studies found that people with high self-perceived attractiveness are less willing to wear a mask, and vice versa.

Front. Psychol., 24 January 2023
Sec. Personality and Social Psychology
Volume 14 - 2023 |https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1084941

Post COVID-19, still wear a face mask? Self-perceived facial attractiveness reduces mask-wearing intention

With the emerging post-COVID era, wearing face masks has become a domain of personal choice. Then, who wants to continue wearing a mask when it is no longer mandatory? In this article, we expect and examine the role of self-perceived facial attractiveness in predicting mask-wearing intention and its mechanism across three studies (total N = 1,030). Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that individuals with high (vs. low) self-perceived attractiveness were less willing to wear a mask, due to a weaker endorsement of the belief that mask-wearing enhances their perceived attractiveness (i.e., mask attractiveness belief). Study 3 further revealed that this mediational association was stronger in situations where the need to deliver a favorable impression was high (job interview context) versus low (walking a dog context). Overall, we provide a novel finding that self-perceived attractiveness has significant effects on mask-wearing intention via mask attractiveness belief in the post-pandemic of COVID-19. Our findings suggest that mask-wearing can shift from being a self-protection measure during the COVID-19 pandemic to a self-presentation tactic in the post-pandemic era.