MarketWatch reports:

As the coronavirus death toll ticks up and some states ease their restrictions, a new study suggests that men might be more likely to leave their face coverings at home.

Men in the U.S. report less intention than women to wear face coverings, especially in counties that don’t mandate wearing them, according to a paper authored by researchers from Middlesex University London in the U.K. and the Mathematical Science Research Institute in Berkeley, Calif. This, the authors say, suggests that making face coverings mandatory “has a larger effect on men than on women.”

Men are also less likely to believe they’ll be seriously impacted by COVID-19, despite data to the contrary, the research found. “The fact that men less than women intend to wear a face covering can be partly explained by the fact that men more than women believe that they will be relatively unaffected by the disease,” co-authors Valerio Capraro and Hélène Barcelo wrote.

This finding is “particularly ironic,” they said, as men appear to be more severely impacted by the virus: In places such as China, Italy, Spain and New York City, men have died from COVID-19 at far higher rates than women did.

The study also found that men are more likely to report feeling negative emotions while wearing a face covering. “Men more than women agree that wearing a face covering is shameful, not cool, a sign of weakness, and a stigma; and these gender differences also mediate gender differences intentions to wear a face covering,” Capraro and Barcelo wrote. That finding, they said, indicates that interventions to promote men’s use of face-coverings work to decrease those emotions. [Continue reading…]