ArticlePloS one2021
When face masks signal social identity: Explaining the deep face-mask divide during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Article in PloS one, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed.
- Intervening on Trust in Science to Reduce Belief in COVID-19 Misinformation and Increase COVID-19 Preventive Behavioral Intentions: Randomized Controlled Trial.Journal of medical Internet research · 2021Trial
- How facemasks shape trust in social interactions.PloS one · 2025Article
- The influence of face mask color on perceptions of African American and white men.Cognitive processing · 2024Article
- Attitudes, Beliefs, and Perceptions Associated with Mask Wearing within Four Racial and Ethnic Groups Early in the COVID-19 Pandemic.Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities · 2024Article
- Article
- Political party affiliation, social identity cues, and attitudes about protective mask-wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany.PloS one · 2024Article
- Incivility in COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate Discourse and Moral Foundations: Natural Language Processing Approach.JMIR formative research · 2023Article
- Predictors and motives for mask-wearing behavior and vaccination intention.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Individual costs and societal benefits of interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Association between the COVID-19 Vaccine and Preventive Behaviors: Panel Data Analysis from Japan.Vaccines · 2023Article
- Trust as a key measure of quality and safety after the restriction of family contact in Canadian long-term care settings during the COVID-19 pandemic.Health policy (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2023Review
- Transmission prevention behaviors in US households with SARS-CoV-2 cases in 2020.Frontiers in epidemiology · 2023Article
- Social representations of mask wearing in the general population during the COVID-19 pandemic.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- Association between social capital and COVID-19 preventive behaviors: Country-level ecological study.International journal of disaster risk reduction : IJDRR · 2022Article
- Face mask use as a categorical dimension in social perception.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- The effects of face coverings, own-ethnicity biases, and attitudes on emotion recognition.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2022Article
- Leverage the power of ritual to improve community health worker efficacy and public health outcomes: Lessons from Bihar, India.The Lancet regional health. Southeast Asia · 2022Review
- Face masks versus sunglasses: limited effects of time and individual differences in the ability to judge facial identity and social traits.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2022Article
- Traditional Korean Medicine Home Care for the Older Adults during the COVID-19 Pandemic in South Korea.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- The Mask Game with Multiple Populations.Dynamic games and applications · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
With the COVID-19 pandemic still raging and the vaccination program still rolling out, there continues to be an immediate need for public health officials to better understand the mechanisms behind the deep and perpetual divide over face masks in America. Using a random sample of Americans (N = 615), following a pre-registered experimental design and analysis plan, we first demonstrated that mask wearers were not innately more cooperative as individuals than non-mask wearers in the Prisoners' Dilemma (PD) game when information about their own and the other person's mask usage was not salient. However, we found strong evidence of in-group favouritism among both mask and non-mask wearers when information about the other partner's mask usage was known. Non-mask wearers were 23 percentage points less likely to cooperate than mask wearers when facing a mask-wearing partner, and 26 percentage points more likely to cooperate than mask wearers when facing a non-mask-wearing partner. Our analysis suggests social identity effects as the primary reason behind people's decision whether to wear face masks during the pandemic.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.