Has the COVID pandemic changed people's priorities? The answer, of course, is "yes."
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A new study conducted in Britain in February 2021, seven months after the country instated a mask mandate for public spaces, found that women were more attracted to men wearing masks than to men with their faces exposed.
The results of the study, which have yet to undergo the peer review process, indicate that women's perception of what constitutes attractiveness in men has changed completely, since a similar study from Japan, conducted prior to the pandemic in 2016, found that woman were significantly more attracted to men whose faces were exposed than to men wearing face masks.
The lead researcher on the team was Dr. Michael Lewis of Cardiff University. Lewis' team took a group of 43 female students who looked at 40 faces of conventionally attractive men. The women were asked to rate how attractive they found each man, some of whom were wearing surgical masks in accordance with COVID regulations, some of whom were wearing surgical masks incorrectly, and some of whom were pictured without masks at all.
The men whose pictures showed them correctly wearing surgical masks were ranked the most attractive.
Lewis said he was not surprised by the results, noting that in the pre-pandemic Japanese study, women associated men in masks with illness. But today, he said, masks were associated with calm and protection, leading the women to feel more attraction to and sympathy with the men wearing masks.
The university plans to run a similar study to see whether or not men were more attracted to women wearing masks.
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