ArticleFrontiers in psychology2022
The Attractiveness of Masked Faces Is Influenced by Race and Mask Attitudes.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- Unveiling the "Less is More" paradox: How experience and cognitive filling drive attractiveness in occluded faces.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2025Article
- The Crucial Role of the Eyes in Predicting Facial Attractiveness from Parts.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Unveiling why race does not affect the mask effect on attractiveness: but gender and expression do.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2024Article
- Facial morphometric differences across face databases: influence of ethnicities and sex.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2023Article
- Does wearing facial masks increase perceived facial attractiveness? An eye-tracking experiment.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- The adaptive significance of human scleral brightness: an experimental study.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Occlusion of faces by sanitary masks improves facial attractiveness of other races.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
This study tests the influence of wearing a protective face mask on the perceived attractiveness of the wearer. Participants who identified as White, and who varied in their ideological stance toward mask wearing, rated the attractiveness of facial photographs. The photos varied in baseline attractiveness (low, medium, and high), race (White and Asian), and whether or not the face was wearing a protective mask. Attitudes regarding protective masks were measured after the rating task using a survey to identify participants as either pro- or anti-mask. The results showed that masked individuals of the same race were generally rated as more attractive than unmasked individuals, but that masked individuals of another race were rated as less attractive than unmasked individuals. Moreover, pro-mask participants rated masked individuals as generally more attractive than unmasked individuals, whereas anti-maskers rated masked individuals as less attractive. A control experiment, replicating the procedure but replacing the protective masks with a partially occluding notebook, showed that these effects were mask-specific. These results demonstrate that perceived attractiveness is affected by characteristics of the viewer (attitudes toward protective masks), their relationship to the target (same or different race), and by circumstances external to both (pandemic).
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.