Face masks make people look more attractive, a study finds

Virgin Radio

17 Jan 2022, 14:31

It may be a divisive issue, but you might want to think twice about wearing a mask now because research from Cardiff University suggests that they can make someone look more attractive.

The explanation is that we find someone wearing a mask, particularly a blue medical mask, reassuring and therefore will feel more positive towards them.

Interestingly, before the pandemic, medical face masks actually reduced someone’s attractiveness, but Dr. Michael Lewis, from the university’s School of Psychology and an expert in the psychology of faces, wanted to conduct the study to see if our feelings had changed.

It turns out they have.

The study included images of 40 male faces. In each one, the men were either wearing a cloth mask, a blue medical mask or no mask but with a black book covering the lower part of their face.

A group of women was then asked to rate the men’s attractiveness in each photo on a scale of one to 10.

The results were that women found men more attractive when wearing a blue medical mask and the least attractive when they were wearing no mask at all.

Speaking about the study in an interview with Sky News, Dr. Michael Lewis said: “Our study suggests faces are considered most attractive when covered by medical face masks. This may be because we're used to healthcare workers wearing blue mask, and now we associate these with people in caring or medical professions.

"At a time when we feel vulnerable, we may find the wearing of medical masks reassuring and so feel more positive towards the wearer.”

He went on to say that cloth masks produced similar results and although masks may hide “undesirable features” in the lower part of people’s faces, the effect was the same for both less attractive and more attractive people.

The research was conducted in February 2021, seven months after face masks were made compulsory in the UK.

Further explaining how the pandemic has influenced this change, Dr. Lewis said it relates to evolutionary psychology.

He said: “Disease and evidence of disease can play a big role in mate selection - previously any cues to disease would be a big turn off. Now we can observe a shift in our psychology such that face masks are no longer acting as a contamination cue."

The university will also conduct the same experiment with female faces to see if similar results occur.