閉塞感の美しさを超えて：医療用マスクは他の顔面被覆よりも顔の魅力を高める

Beyond the beauty of occlusion: medical masks increase facial attractiveness more than other face coverings.

抄録

衛生マスク効果（Miyazaki and Kawahara in Jpn Psychol Res 58(3):261-272, 2016）とは、医療用フェイスマスクが病気のイメージを促し、その結果、着用者の顔の魅力の評価が低くなるという知見です。しかし、COVID-19パンデミックの際には、医療用マスクは魅力を高めることがわかっています（Patel et al.in Plast Reconstruct Surg Glob Open 8(8), 2020）が、これは閉塞感の一般的な効果であった可能性があります。この問題をさらに検討するために、女性参加者に、医療用マスク、布マスク、本で隠した、または隠していない魅力度の低いまたは高い男性の顔を提示し、魅力度を評価してもらいました。その結果、医療用マスクで顔を隠したときに最も魅力的だと思われ、布マスクで顔を隠したときには隠さなかったときよりも有意に魅力的だと思われました。予想に反して、基本的な魅力度は覆いの種類とは相互作用しなかったことから、これは単に負の特徴を覆い隠すことによるものではないことが示唆された。今回の結果は、サニタリーマスク効果や社会的望ましさの観点からの説明とは相反するものであり、医療用マスクと介護職との関連性が模索される。

The sanitary-mask effect (Miyazaki and Kawahara in Jpn Psychol Res 58(3):261-272, 2016) is the finding that medical face masks prompt an image of disease and thus result in lower ratings of facial attractiveness of the wearer. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, medical masks have been found to increase attractiveness (Patel et al. in Plast Reconstruct Surg Glob Open 8(8), 2020) although this could have been a general effect of occlusion. To further explore this issue, female participants were presented with a series of male faces of low or high attractiveness that were occluded with a medical mask, cloth mask, book or not occluded and asked to rate them on attractiveness. The results show that faces were considered as most attractive when covered by medical masks and significantly more attractive when occluded with cloth masks than when not occluded. Contrary to expectation, base attractiveness did not interact with the type of occlusion, suggesting that this is not simply due to occlusion of negative features. The present findings are contrary to the sanitary-mask effect and explanations in terms of social desirability, and the association of medical masks with caregiving professions is explored.