The study found that people who wore masks were less likely than those who didn’t wear masks to engage in deviant behavior, which included parking violations, running red lights and cheating for money. According to the researchers, this is not a coincidence, as wearing a mask in China raises moral awareness, thereby encouraging some people to be more law-abiding.
“We found that, in China, masks, as a moral symbol, can reduce deviant behavior in the wearer,” said Jackson Lu, an associate professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, in a newly published paper detailing the findings. co-author. As Jackson-Luo and his co-authors point out, many factors other than masks may influence behavior. They calculated that mask wearing accounted for about 4% of the change in deviant behavior they observed when comparing those who wore masks to those who didn’t.
Since the pandemic began in early 2020, social scientists have learned a lot about what makes people inclined to wear masks, but have generally not explored the behavioral consequences of wearing masks. In conducting the research, Jackson-Luo and his co-authors tested two competing hypotheses about the effect of mask wearing on Chinese deviant behavior. One hypothesis is that masks can inhibit deviant behavior in the wearer by increasing anonymity, making people more likely to engage in norm-violating behavior.
A competing hypothesis is that wearing a mask may increase people’s moral awareness. If it is a moral symbol that symbolizes the moral responsibility and virtue of protecting others and sacrificing personal convenience for the collective good, perhaps wearing a mask guides individuals to choose the morally correct course of action.