ArticleSocial science & medicine (1982)2022
The politics of mask-wearing: Political preferences, reactance, and conflict aversion during COVID.
Article in Social science & medicine (1982), 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
What it found
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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.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed.
- Side messages, side effects: Justifying infection prevention but fuelling social polarisation.SSM - population health · 2026Article
- Partisan Divergence in Fertility Change Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Florida.Population research and policy review · 2025Article
- Political and educational dynamics behind the Evangelicals' stance against mask mandates during COVID-19 in the U.S.Social science research · 2025Article
- Navigating concurrent public health emergencies: Indigenous perspectives from the Cedar Project in British Columbia.PLOS global public health · 2025Article
- Impact of face masks on empathy and communication in head and neck cancer patients: a case-control study.Frontiers in oncology · 2025Article
- Ideological Consistency and News Sharing as Predictors of Masking Among College Students.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2024Article
- Local public health under threat: Harassment faced by local health department leaders during the COVID-19 pandemic.Public health in practice (Oxford, England) · 2024Article
- Article
- Political party affiliation, social identity cues, and attitudes about protective mask-wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany.PloS one · 2024Article
- Characteristics associated with attitudes and behaviors towards mask wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic: The Trojan Pandemic Response Initiative.BMC public health · 2023Article
- The Role of Political Belief in COVID-19 Vaccine Resistance, Virus Transmission, and Closure Policy Response.Vaccines · 2023Article
- Trust in science and scientists among university students, staff, and faculty of a large, diverse university in Los Angeles during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trojan Pandemic Response Initiative.BMC public health · 2023Article
- Evaluating the Impact of Mask Mandates and Political Party Affiliation on Mental Health Internet Search Behavior in the United States During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Generalized Additive Mixed Model Framework.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Article
- State mask mandates and psychological reactance theory: The role of political partisanship and COVID-19 risk in mask adoption and resistance.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2022Article
- Exploration of the impact of political ideology disparity on COVID-19 transmission in the United States.BMC public health · 2022Article
- Municipal Ethnic Composition and Disparities in COVID-19 Infections in New Jersey: A Blinder-Oaxaca Decomposition Analysis.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Leveraging 13 million responses to the U.S. COVID-19 Trends and Impact Survey to examine vaccine hesitancy, vaccination, and mask wearing, January 2021-February 2022.BMC public health · 2022Article
- Public policy and conspiracies: The case of mandates.Current opinion in psychology · 2022Review
- Conservative Media Use and COVID-19 Related Behavior: The Moderating Role of Media Literacy Variables.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- COVID-19 mass media coverage in English and public reactions: a West-East comparisonPeerJ. Computer science · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The current project examines how psychological reactance and conflict orientation relate to the highly politicized debate over mask-wearing in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic. We explore how psychological reactance and conflict orientation are related to self-reported mask-wearing, and how these same predispositions are correlated with political beliefs. We then assess how favorability towards President Trump in the context of the 2020 Election was uniquely correlated with these traits and how Trump favorability both mediated and moderated the effects of conflict orientation and psychological reactance on individuals' likelihood of wearing masks. Results from a national survey of U.S. adults from Nov-Dec 2020 suggest that Trump favorability was positively associated with trait reactance, negatively associated with conflict aversion, and negatively associated with self-reported mask-wearing. The opposite was true of favorability towards Joe Biden. Moderation analyses indicate that conflict-approaching Biden detractors were especially unlikely to report wearing masks, while mediation analyses show that political preferences significantly mediated the relationships between both psychological traits and self-reported mask-wearing. Implications for the politicization of health messaging and health behavior are discussed.
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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.