This week, we started to abandon the mask outside. Mathilde Fontez, editor-in-chief of the scientific magazine Epsiloon, speaks to us today of a double phenomenon, acting on the gaze of others towards us, when we wear a mask.
franceinfo: Psychologists prove that these masks tended to make us more beautiful?
Mathilde Fontez: Not sure that it encourages us to keep it on purpose, we are probably too fed up. But yes: in the words of the Cardiff University psychologists who conducted the study, “the mask makes us more attractive”. What these researchers show is that there are two cumulative effects: the effect of the hidden face, and the effect of the medical mask itself.
The first is quite counter-intuitive: what happens when you look at a masked person? We automatically imagine, without even realizing it, the missing part. However, researchers have long thought that it could be negative simply because it requires an effort: the facial information is more difficult to process – since it is partly missing. Suddenly, it is less pleasant to look at this face. And by association, we thought it would be considered less pleasant altogether: less beautiful.
Except that’s not the case…
No. That’s not what takes over. What takes precedence is the very process of reconstruction of the hidden part of the face by the brain. And what the researchers see is that when you do that, you don’t invent defects: you spontaneously construct an image with optimal properties.
We idealize the configuration of the face that we do not see. Basically, our brain builds the hidden part on a hypothesis, a perfect extrapolation: a nice nose, symmetry, a chin with ideal proportions.
However, the surgical mask is not trivial, it is associated with the disease…
Yes, and this is the second effect. We thought that displaying a symbol of the disease on our face like that could have a negative effect on perception, and make us less attractive. This had even been tested in previous studies. Except that these studies were reproduced after two years of Covid-19: and everything was reversed.
In experiments, faces hidden by a surgical or even fabric mask were perceived as more beautiful than those hidden by, for example, a book. The researchers interpret this as a change in our social norms: the surgical mask was previously associated with fear, with a rejection of the disease. And today, it evokes rather – without our being really aware of it – the fight against disease: the doctor, the nurse, who have become icons with the pandemic, positive icons.
In short, with the mask, we are doubly more beautiful! So that’s for sure, it’s a detail, but it’s still quite amazing to see how much the Covid pandemic has changed, right down to our perception…