Thursday, August 27, 2020
The psychology of anti-maskers
Some people refuse to wear masks, despite their known effectiveness vs. COVID-19.
Dr. Thad Leffingwell is a clinical health psychologist and professor at Oklahoma State University. In his years at OSU, he’s worked his way up to being the head of the psychology department. The O’Colly interviewed Leffingwell about the psychology behind the decisions to not wear masks, and to go to large gatherings during a pandemic. Q: What goes into the psychology of someone refusing to wear a mask? A: It’s complicated. I think there’s lots of explanations why a lot of folks are struggling to wear masks. I think part of it is the psychology of risk and risk perception that we’re dealing with low-base rate risks and not that’s something that we hu-
mans are very good at adjusting our behavior around. We tend to adjust really well for acute risks, like “don’t play with fire,” but things that seem to be long term far away, or unseen risks, we have a hard time remembering those and believing those. I think that’s the baseline problem as far as our human nature. I think the other problem we have right now is the unfortunate politicization of mask wearing where it’s “are you blue team or red team?” Whether you wear a mask is tied up in political slogans about freedom or collective action that I think drives a lot of the mask wearing or refusal to wear a mask right now is unfortunately a political statement, not so much a public health action.
Q: Let’s say it’s not a mask. Let’s say there’s a device you had to hold on to, or a shirt you had to wear, that guaranteed 100% immunity to COVID-19. Do you think that, even with 100% protection, there would still be opposition to it? A: That’s a fun thought experiment. I think probably among some because it would bend on who’s telling them to wear the shirt. If it comes from somebody who they perceive to be a leader of their team, maybe so. But if it was coming from the other side, maybe not. Your experiment makes me think of something else that’s a problem with mask wearing is… if you ask the question “do masks work, or
O’Colly
do they not work?” it depends what you mean by “work.” So if the standard is, in your thought experiment, that the shirt you wear 100% prevents COVID, well of course there is no such thing as that does anything like that, including masks. So wearing masks, on the one hand we know that even if both parties wear a mask and one party is shedding the virus, the person who doesn’t have the virus could still contract the virus, it just dramatically lowers the chances. But does it 100% prevent infection? No it does not.
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