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When face masks signal social identity : explaining the deep face-mask divide during the COVID-19 pandemic
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Powdthavee, Nattavudh, Riyanto, Yohanes E. , Wong, Erwin C. L. , Yeo, Jonathan X. W. and Chan, Qi Yu (2021) When face masks signal social identity : explaining the deep face-mask divide during the COVID-19 pandemic. PLoS One, 16 (6). e0253195. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0253195 ISSN 1932-6203.
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WRAP-When-face-masks-social-identity-deep-face-mask-divide-COVID-19-pandemic-2021.pdf - Accepted Version - Requires a PDF viewer. Available under License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Download (1262Kb) | Preview |
Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253195
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.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
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Subjects: | G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GT Manners and customs H Social Sciences > HM Sociology R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine |
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Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Warwick Business School | ||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | COVID-19 (Disease), Epidemics, Group identity, Masks | ||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | PLoS One | ||||||
Publisher: | Public Library of Science | ||||||
ISSN: | 1932-6203 | ||||||
Official Date: | 10 June 2021 | ||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 16 | ||||||
Number: | 6 | ||||||
Article Number: | e0253195 | ||||||
DOI: | 10.1371/journal.pone.0253195 | ||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 1 June 2021 | ||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 1 June 2021 | ||||||
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