(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-12-15)
Durrani, Faris; Fassih, Aurian; Schaufel, Hunter; Watkins, Taylor
This study aims to see whether different scenarios surrounding a character’s choice to wear a mask or not affect another person’s perception of that character. To do this, we conducted two simultaneous studies where we presented the participant with a written scenario about a character and then gave them a survey of perception based on sociability and morality. In the first study, the scenario involved a character choosing whether to mask while surrounded by a varying number of people already wearing masks in an auditorium. In the second study, the scenario involved the character choosing whether to mask under various levels of a mask mandate. We found that while the choice to mask did affect people's perception of the character, neither level of masking in the surrounding crowd nor level of mask mandate moderated the relationship between choice to mask and perception. The lack of significant interaction effects may have been due to weak manipulation or indirect measures. Despite this, the significant main effect of perception of a person based on their choice to mask could inform future policy regarding masks on college campuses