POLLING SHOWS WHO IS MORE LIKELY TO WEAR MASK
Surveys find that gender, political affiliation and education level are behavioral factors
As states continue to lift restrictions that were put in place to curb the coronavirus outbreak and as Americans start going out in public again, recent surveys suggest that gender, political affiliation and education level are factors that have a bearing on who is wearing a mask, and who isn’t.
Public health officials have recommended wearing masks in public when social distancing measures are difficult to maintain, such as in grocery stores and pharmacies, and at least a dozen states have required them in those circumstances. And most businesses that are reopening are doing so with restrictions: fewer customers, social distancing and face masks.
According to a Gallup poll that was conducted in midapril, only one-third of Americans said they always wore a mask or cloth face covering outside the home. Another one-third said they sometimes wore a mask in public, and one-third reported that they never did.
Women were found to be more likely than men to wear masks.
About 67 percent of women said they had worn a mask outside their home, compared with 56 percent of men, according to the Gallup poll, which was based on a random sample of 2,451 U.S. adults and had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
“Do men and women think differently about wearing masks?” said Catherine Sanderson, a psychology professor at Amherst College. “Absolutely, in precisely the same way men and women think differently in terms of all types of health-related behavior. Men speed more. Men engage in higher rates of binge drinking. Men are less likely to wear seat belts.”
A pre-print study — posted online in May, but not published in a scientific journal and not yet peer-reviewed — found that American men were less likely to wear face masks and that fewer men than women believed that they would be seriously affected by the coronavirus. The study, conducted by researchers at Middlesex University in London and the Mathematical Science Research Institute in Berkeley, reported that men also found masks to be shameful.
Democrats were found more likely to say they’ve worn masks than Republicans.
Of those polled by Gallup, 75 percent of Democrats said they had worn a mask in public, while 58 percent of independents and less than half of Republicans said the same.
Democrats were far more likely to live in counties where the virus has sickened and killed more people, while Republicans were more likely to live in counties that have been relatively unscathed by the illness, although they were paying an economic price. This contributes to the conflicting partisan response to the pandemic, including how to reopen businesses and whether to take extra precautions to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
College graduates were found somewhat more likely to say they have worn a mask.
According to the Gallup poll, 66 percent of the college graduates surveyed said they had worn a mask in public. About 60 percent of those without a college degree said they had worn one.
American adults who said they trusted scientists and journalists “a lot” were also more likely to claim to have worn a mask in public, according to the poll.
Padilla writes for The New York Times.