Men less likely to wear face masks because they’re "not cool" and "a sign of weakness"

Men in the US 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 UK 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.