REALITY CHECK
Wearing face masks could affect how we communicate
How are face masks changing the way we behave and communicate with one another?
One of the more obvious societal changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic is that it’s now far more common for people to wear masks in public. This is good: the masks are helping to limit the spread of COVID-19. But as masks become commonplace, it’s interesting to consider how they affect our interaction.
The human face plays an important role in much of our communication and interaction. We’ve even evolved dedicated brain regions for recognising faces. So, obscuring half of it won’t go unnoticed. As some have pointed out, until recently, covering the face was generally treated with much suspicion, something often used by unscrupulous types to stir up ideologically-useful Islamophobia by condemning the wearing of niqÞbs.
Consider our perception of masks in the prepandemic world. You’d invariably see them used in situations that suggest risk or danger, like when people handle hazardous materials or waste, or investigate crime scenes. Television portrayals of muggers and violent criminals typically show them wearing a mask. Even surgeons and dentists, regular mask-wearers, while undeniably there to help people, mean masks are associated with poor health, body violation, and other things we don’t like.
One potential outcome of this is that we all become more wary, more attentive to dangers. A constant presence of threat cues in our environment has marked effects on our attention and thinking. It could lead to people being more anxious, less engaged, and slower to respond to what’s going on around them, even if it’s important, because masks mean that part of our brain is always preoccupied.
On the other hand, seeing masks everywhere could make people less worried. It suggests things are under control, that protection is present, that danger is minimised. Of course, this can have downsides, too. Studies into bike helmets, another head-covering garment intended to reduce hazards to health, have shown that wearing them can often make people take more risks.
Would regular mask-wearing lead to people taking the risks of COVID-19 less seriously? That’s far from guaranteed. Masks are a very different thing to helmets, and are perceived differently, but it’s something to keep an eye on.
One obvious concern about masks is the effect they have on communication. As stated, our faces play a big role in how we communicate, and masks undeniably obscure it. This causes issues for both the communicator and the communicatee.
We could end up with people displaying some mild version of the disinhibition effect, usually seen online when people can communicate anonymously, and subsequently
“In a pre-pandemic world, you’d see masks used in situations that suggest risk or danger, like handling hazardous substances or investigating a crime scene”
show a lack of restraint and concern for who they’re talking to, which is why the internet can seem so hostile.
Admittedly, it’s somewhat far-fetched to expect people to suddenly abandon all social norms when talking to someone, just because they can’t see part of the person’s face. But then, studies into people with facial paralysis show that others do tend to perceive them more negatively. Not being able to read people’s facial expressions seems to make us more wary, more suspicious.
Interestingly, the same studies reveal that those with facial paralysis tend to compensate for their inability to produce facial expressions by exaggerating their voice and their body language, conveying their emotions with more exuberant arm movements, larger gestures, more emphasis on words, and so on. And this does indeed make others perceive them more positively.
It’s interesting to see whether this will occur on a larger social scale, and we end up displaying emotions more with our bodies, when our faces are covered. Particularly in Britain, a country where people often pride themselves on being reserved and aloof.
At the end of the day, humans are an incredibly interactive species, and it’ll take more than a virus and masks to stop us communicating. How we end up overcoming these obstacles remains to be seen.
“Not being able to read people’s facial expressions seems to make us more wary, more suspicious”
event for fans of Major League Eating everywhere (yes, seriously). Every summer, frankfurter-guzzling heavyweights fly in from all corners of the globe to stuff themselves silly for 10 minutes in front of a crowd of 40,000 screaming spectators, with each competitor hoping to return home with the victor’s Mustard Belt. Chestnut, a 104kg (230lb) food hoover has been toppled only once since 2007. He has broken more world records than any other competitor, and in this year’s low-key socially distanced event, he broke his own world record (again) by ingesting a gut-busting 75 hotdogs (buns included) in 10 minutes – a staggering 33 more than the next best competitor.
BINGE TO WIN
You might scoff at the idea that this grotesque gladiatorial spectacle could be considered the world’s fastest-growing ‘sport’, but this rapidly ballooning industry has just birthed some serious and thought-provoking science research. An investigation recently published in the respected academic journal Biology Letters, has deduced that the 10-minute record will never exceed 84 hotdogs – this is the absolute human limit. According to the paper’s author, Dr James Smoliga, not even Chestnut could eat any more.
This is undoubtedly click-bait science of the highest order, hitting the tabloid headlines, and it carries the distinct whiff of fast food industryfunding. Rest easy, though, any worries that Big Hotdog are taking a bite out of independent science research are unfounded.
Chatting with the slim-framed Smoliga one lunchtime, he explained to me that the annual hotdog-eating contest has been a “guilty pleasure” for him since the 1990s. He told me that this investigation was a natural evolution from his previous track-and-field performance research: “It just dawned on me: I bet the hotdog competition follows the same pattern [of performance seen in other sports]”. Taking the baton on from other scholars who have used statistics and high-level mathematics to predict the limits of human physical abilities – such as the theory that the marathon will never be run in less than 1:58:05 – Smoliga plugged in 39 years’ worth of Hotdog Eating Contest data to these sophisticated mathematical models. Plotting the results on a graph, it was clear, he says, that competitive-eating abilities have improved on a trajectory that almost exactly mirrors that of other sports. Throughout the 1980s, hotdog-eating records improved only slightly year-on-year, equivalent to conventional sports before they turned professional. Victors of the burgeoning event were mostly a “bunch of objectively obese men”, Smoliga explained, capable of forcing down about one hotdog per minute. This all changed in 2001 when highly trained Japanese eaters suddenly burst onto the scene, rapidly devouring the competition. Leading the pack was Takeru Kobayashi, who made light work of the competition, doubling the then world record from 25 to 50 hotdogs on his first appearance.
Ding-dong battles between Kobayashi and America’s best eaters saw a flood of sponsorship money and the curious competition quickly turned professional. With greater incentives comes greater participation, improved training techniques and strategy. The early 2000s in competitive eating parallel the huge gains made in athletics in the 1970s and 1980s.
NEXT GENERATION
The new generation of competitive eaters train themselves hard. Realising that excess fat stifles the stomach’s ability to rapidly inflate, the competitors keep themselves trim, and train their bodies to tolerate ever-increasing amounts of food without gagging. By regularly slurping vast amounts of soup, a competitive eater can progressively stretch their stomach, much like how ear lobes can be stretched to extraordinary proportions with earrings that steadily increase in size.
Smoliga’s analysis deduced that the absolute maximal ‘active consumption rate’ (ACR) – the amount of fresh matter than can be consumed in a given time – would be 832g per minute.
Not content to leave it there, Smoliga went on to compare our food-gobbling abilities with other animals’ scoffing skills. “I thought that this is going to be a really interesting topic to write about and to explore the underlying science,” says Smoliga. In the league table of mega munchers, Homo sapiens are on par with grizzly bears, faster than coyotes, but slower than wolves (which can consume over a kilogram of meat per minute).
Top competitive eaters’ abilities are astonishing – Chestnut wolfed down nearly 7.5 kilograms of food (22,000 calories – enough for 10 days) in 10 minutes in his 2020 triumph. And while the science may show that competitive eating serves as a curious thought experiment for understanding human abilities, it doesn’t offer an easy answer on whether you consider this potentially dangerous discipline to be a true sport. “I’m not sure I want to be on the record either way,” Smoliga tells me, “but if I had to choose, I would call it a sport – if bass fishing is a sport, then this is a sport – although I wouldn’t recommend it!”