Leveraging impression management motives to increase the use of face masks
Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: Three pilot studies (Ntotal = 832) revealed that people held more positive attitudes toward targets wearing protective face masks. Therefore, we examined whether knowledge of this self-presentational benefit would increase people’s intentions to wear face masks. Participants (N = 997) were randomly assigned to read a passage about the COVID-19 pandemic, the safety benefit of mask-wearing, the self-presentational benefit of mask-wearing, or a combination of the latter two. Although this manipulation failed, findings revealed that preexisting beliefs about masked targets being more likable were positively associated with mask-wearing intentions, particularly among participants less concerned with disease or more politically conservative.
Source: The Journal of Social Psychology
Institutions: Florida State University, Christopher Newport University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4381715290