AGAINST AUTHORITIES IN MASKS: A Survey Snapshot of Mostly White Women Conservative Anti-Mask Claims

6 July 2020

Benjamin Peters[1]

Executive Summary

An anecdotal survey (N=30) of anti-mask communities on Facebook during the last week of June 2020 suggests that anti-maskers tend to be white women American Trump supporters that claim to strongly value individual liberty as well as mixed sensitivities to health. It is curious that anti-maskers express some heightened sensitivities to health risks and hygiene. These pro-health impulses are also obviously, if still counterintuitively, directed against the overarching medical consensus that wearing masks helps slow COVID-19 infection rates. How do anti-maskers explain the swerve in their claims to being pro-health? It appears that anti-maskers’ surprisingly strong instincts for individualist, anti-authority liberties best describe why they also reject the overarching (if also somewhat initially inconsistent) medical consensus in favor of wearing masks. Demographically, the anti-mask community appears to rally together largely white women conservatives that believe and practice many different conflicting things about masks under the broad tent banner of individualist anti-authority values. While the anti-mask materials naturally challenge most mask-wearing behaviors, it may be worth noting that none of these materials, to my view at least, have fundamentally weakened the baseline position in favor of wearing a mask: namely, that wearing masks do more good than harm in blocking COVID-19 airborne droplets from entering and exiting mouths and noses.

Introduction

Let’s start with an inconvenient fact: wearing a mask is a slight nuisance. No matter how begrudgingly or eagerly we may admit it, basically everyone acknowledges that wearing a mask can occasionally impede the ease of in-person communication, make us aware of the subconscious breathing processes, fog glasses, and, when coughed or sneezed into, prove genuinely gross. Moreover, unlike washing hands, wearing a mask is a relatively novel public phenomenon across most of the industrialized West: it publicly marks the wearer in newly visible ways. So, it is not particularly surprising that wearing masks — a fresh experiment in rearranging the face-to-face interface — would eventually become political. What may be interesting, however, is why actual anti-maskers justify their positions in the ways they do.

The theoretical scope of anti-mask claims is potentially vast. If someone is motivated enough to ignore consensus medical recommendations in deciding they do not want to wear a mask, almost any motivated reason could do: once unfettered from the consensus of evidence, anti-maskers are just as able to claim that not wearing masks will speed herd immunity against a lethal virus as they can deny the existence of the virus at all. Or, an anti-masker motivated by hygiene concerns could just as easily claim that masks should not be worn because they are not sanitary enough (and thus might speed disease) as they could claim that they are too sanitary (and thus weaken the immune system). The fact that all of these claims are wrong does nothing to slow them. So too could a theoretical anti-masker preoccupied with equality (although not encountered in this study) claim that they will not wear a mask in order to save valuable masks for the most vulnerable or that they will not wear a mask in principle until everyone has equal access to masks. So long as evidence does not limit one’s claims, one can claim to be anti-mask for almost any reason. When dealing a relatively new social phenomenon, the universe of possible anti-masks claims is enormous and, once untethered by evidence, flexible in almost any direction. People are nothing if not creative in justifying our own ways to ourselves.

So, given the vast universe of possible anti-mask claims, I was curious to find out: what can I learn over a long weekend about the particular clustering of anti-masks claims today? Existent anti-mask claims do not appear evenly distributed across the universe of possible anti-mask claims. Not at all. So, what can we learn from the patterns that do exist?

Notes on the Limits of the Study

Below follows a brief snapshot on self-reported demographics, behaviors, and beliefs of several anti-mask Facebook groups. I should be quick to emphasize that, while I am a scholar and trained researcher, this brief snapshot does not represent anything resembling serious sociological or public survey research: it is an anecdotal impression that is as serious as I could manage over a long weekend. I conducted this survey out of sheer curiosity and have no professional interest in the subject: namely, I created an anonymous survey “Make Your Voice Heard: The Anti-Mask Community” of about 20 questions on a Google form, temporarily joined several anti-mask Facebook groups, then circulated the survey among them, and then stopped the survey after collecting 30 responses during the last week of June 2020. I should emphasize that the survey questions were *not* designed for maximum neutrality: in order to appeal to anti-mask groups, I framed many questions in ways that were careful to both encourage candid anti-mask responses while also never forcing respondents into an anti-mask position. All questions except demographics were optional, the vast majority included an open fill-in-the-blank option, and most questions let respondents select all options that apply. For this reason, most of the percentages listed below do not necessarily sum to 100%.

As a personal aside, I had to belong to several anti-mask groups briefly in order to promote this survey: the resulting flood of meme nonsense in my Facebook feed pressured me to end the survey after a fairly low response number (30) — and I admit I can only wish future researchers more stamina than me! The continuous flow of memes swirling around the echo-amplifier we call Facebook groups is a subject for another study another day. Until then, please note that, in order to filter out as high as a 10% probable troll response rate, I also chose to filter out the most outlandish individual responses since it was often hard to distinguish between the fringe tin-hat true believer and the troll looking for “lulz.” (This decision also protects and extends basic dignity to all those who made a sincere effort to complete the anonymous survey.) As promised in the survey, I also first sent this report, together with the survey results, to any respondent who requested it; I have not received any feedback to date.

Demographics: Who are Anti-Maskers?

Summary: anti-maskers are largely middle-aged white women American Trump supporters.

Of 30 respondents, all but one said they lived in America, although the framing of the survey with an American flag image may have filtered out potential non-American respondents. Almost 90%, or 26 out of 29, respondents primarily identified as “White or Caucasian,” which invites further reflection on the ways that ethnicity is indirectly tied up in anti-mask community expression. A full three quarters (75%) of the respondents identified as women, with only one in 30 preferring not to identify with a gender, which suggests that, even after adjusting for some gendered health survey response bias, anti-maskers tend to identify as more women than men with well-defined gender categories. Only 22 pledged that they would vote in November 2020; but of those 22, 14 (or 66%) pledged to vote for Donald Trump. So, again, anti-masker respondents appear to be almost exclusively American, strongly white, heavily women, and fairly strongly Trump supporters. Most of the other demographic categories did not stand out: the age bias — almost two-thirds were between the ages of 35 and 55 — does not significantly vary from the user biases of Facebook; nor does the respondents’ household size vary significantly from that of the average American household (2.6–3.4 people per household); nor does the educational level of respondents vary significantly from US averages (a majority claimed high school diploma and some post-secondary training, 30% claimed college degree or some post-college training, and 20% claimed a graduate or terminal degree in their field).

Future research into the anti-mask community may do well to examine the complex intersectional dynamics informing especially American white women conservatives.

Behaviors: What Do Anti-Maskers Do?

Summary: anti-maskers self-report a wide range of mask-wearing behaviors.

Over three quarters (76%) report owning or having access to a mask; nevertheless, among many different reported practices, over a third (36%) of anti-maskers report having never worn any mask of any kind. The next largest group, almost a fourth (23%), reported wearing masks whenever required by employers, stores, or hospitals. About 13% reported having only rarely worn a mask in June 2020, and another 13% reported wearing masks less than once a week in the same month. When asked which sources have most influenced their use of masks, the strongest group (31%) identified scientific and medical experts as their source for their beliefs, while governor and government officials (27%) and television news (24%) led social media groups and friends (20%), in-person friends (17%), and reading the news (17%). Perhaps most surprisingly, and more than any other open-ended question, over 40% of all respondents voluntarily wrote-in some additional source that has influenced their thinking, specifying “non-Fauci” medical experts (6%), commonsense (6%), not being able to breathe in a mask (6%), the Bible (3%, or only one respondent), and “YouTube conspiracy channels” (3%). When asked separately to specify which sources have most influenced their thinking, the results were even more varied, ranging from a minority group of self-reaffirming individualist sources such as “myself,” “my personal feelings,” “my own mind,” and “my need to breathe oxygen,” as well as a minority of science-doubting responses such as the inconsistency of the CDC mask recommendations and scare-quoted doubts about “professionals” and “scientific papers” as well as a small minority of conspiracy theory references such as “Alex Jones.” One respondent mentioned “my husband.” It is hard to draw any firm conclusions given this wide variety of sources informing anti-mask behavior except to speculate that it is likely that anti-maskers draw on more individualist, less mainstream, and thus more varied media sources than most. In other words, it is not surprising but still notable to see anti-maskers volunteering conflicting media sources that suggest that, whatever else their political beliefs, they tend to believe more contrary, anti-authority, and occasionally fringe media sources than non-anti-maskers.

Beliefs: What Do Anti-Maskers Claim to Believe?

Summary: anti-maskers justify their positions by drawing on a wide range of claims, including some illuminating contradictory claims. It appears a mixed archipelago of ideological camps held together by a strong current of individualist anti-authority.

Given a range of statements about COVID-19 to choose among, only 13% chose the most extreme position that “it is a world government hoax. There is no virus,” 17% choose the most extreme position that “there is a virus, but China is using it to weaken America,” 43% choose that “the virus is real but not serious: carry on as usual,” a considerable near majority (46%) chose the ostensibly pro-health but contrarian position that “the virus is real, worth treating seriously, but masks are dangerous for health,” and the only true majority position (57%) held that “the virus is real, worth treating seriously, but masks are not effective.” In short, it appears that while the anti-mask community holds a mix of non-reconciling beliefs about the pandemic, the most common anti-mask positions, no matter how wrong or dangerous in practice, are also the least extreme in principle. However fringe as a whole, the anti-maskers appear full of contradictory views and that those views internally divide in statistically predictable ways. There is nothing in the anti-mask claim distribution to suggest that their beliefs skew in any insightful direction except a normal scattershot of belief.

In order to test the correlation between anti-mask positions and other negative partisan themes, the survey also invited anti-maskers to express other negative political positions they may hold. The strongest positions were unsurprisingly the relatively least controversial positions: anti-economic shutdown (72%), anti-censorship (69%), and anti-racism (59%). (These options largely function as control variables since very few people would not be against some element of these positions, although the strength of the anti-economic lockdown relative to other less controversial anti-positions is itself notable.) A majority also supported the pairing of anti-vaccine (62%) and anti-GMO (52%) positions. Presumably, anti-vaccine and anti-GMO positions, like many anti-mask positions, often justify themselves based on kind of (misdirected) hyper-sensitivity to sanitation and hygiene; all three effectively proclaim that the “natural” default is preferable to the “artifice” of the health sciences. In this, anti-maskers cast a curiously postmodern shadow: they deny trust to the very institutions that, no matter how imperfectly, keep modern lives alive.

Standard conservative partisan bias expressed themselves as 45% identified as “anti-Democrat” and 35% identified as “anti-liberal” while 17% felt “anti-Republican” and (below the troll threshold) 10% as “anti-conservative.” 48% identified as “anti-abortion,” 34% as “anti-surveillance,” and 24% as “anti-immigration,” again generally rehearsing vaguely majority conservative sentiments across most anti-masker public opinions.

An alloyed mixture of conspiratorial and anti-conspiratorial thinking expressed itself in ways that are hard to separate: 43% identified as “anti-political correctness,” a considerably large portion of 41% identified as “anti-deep state” (a state authoritarianism conspiracy theory) and only 17% identified as “anti-conspiracy theory.” Religion and anti-religious tensions do not seem to be significant, with 27% identified as “anti-religious” and only 10% identifying as “anti-secular.”

A closer look at the core political values at work also suggest some interesting tensions in the anti-mask groups. For example, 13 respondents (or 43%) reported believing that if everyone stopped wearing masks today, the world would be “healthier” while five respondents (or 16%) reported the opposite, believing that no masks would actually make the world “sicker.” (Some of this last group might be dismissed as anti-mask trolls.) At the same time, 12 respondents (40%) felt that not wearing masks would make the world “freer” while no one reported believing that not wearing masks would make the world “unfree” (or, in other words, no one in the survey preferred to acknowledge that letting the virus spread would likely cause worse shutdowns and more restriction). In other words, it appears easier to be in favor of liberty than it is to know how to be in favor of health: justifying anti-mask positions based on health requires higher cognitive challenges. It requires working through contradictory reasonings and multiple conflicting conclusions. Far more dangerously I might add, reasoning based on liberty is far easier: to hang one’s thinking on the hook of liberty does not appear to encounter the same kind of self-checking or nuanced negotiation. On a related question, about two thirds of all respondents choose that “freedom and liberty” and “personal accountability and responsibility” best correlated with their anti-mask positions, while a little less than half (46%) attributed anti-mask beliefs as drawing from secondary values of “cleanliness, hygiene, and sanitation” and “vaccines and science,” each respectively. Given only one choice of the “most important value in all part of my life” among the core political values of liberty, equality, authority, tradition, or purity, a striking 69% prioritized “liberty, freedom, & anti-control” above all else, while 28% chose “equality & fairness,” only one respondent (3%) chose “purity, sanctity, & cleanliness” as their most important value; no respondents prioritized more traditional cultural and moral conservative values of “authority & obedience” or “tradition & order” above the others. On balance, it appears preliminarily safe to assume that anti-maskers skew more strongly toward libertarian ideologies and do not belong squarely to more traditional wings of conservative thought. Thus, the anti-authority and individualist underpinnings of anti-mask ideology appear to blow in the same direction as broader political winds.

When invited to reflect how their positions on masks has changed over the last few months and what, if anything, would be necessary to change their minds again, exactly half of the anti-mask respondents expressed that “I have never changed my mind on masks. I have always been against masks,” reasserting that, no matter the complexity and contradictions of their differing reasoning, most anti-maskers share a strong self-affirming bias in favor of their own position. (A curious, perhaps partly trolling 16% expressed the opposite opinion, noting “I have never changed my mind on masks. I have never been against masks.”) Of the minority that did identify some causes that led them to become anti-mask, 30% of respondents claimed “inconsistent government and health science recommendations on masks,” 20% claimed “my own experience trying to wear masks,” while 23% of the respondents resorted to individualist instincts of “my own research into the (in)effectiveness of masks.” Tellingly, when asked what would need to happen to change their minds again, a full 70% selected to the most ideologically unwavering survey option that “they have never changed their minds about masks” thus also implying they are unlikely to change their minds in the future either. The largest minority willing to consider changing their minds, 20% of all respondents admitted that only “if my own research suggested masks were helpful, I might change my mind,” rehearsing the strong claims to individually based research.

In Lieu of a Conclusion:

This survey promised to make known truths about masks and the anti-mask community. Alas, it appears that at least one hard truth is now a bit clearer: it is hard to know how little hope to have for a group that appears to agree on little else except that they self-describe as unlikely to voluntarily change their minds anytime soon. At the same time, this quick study is meant only to sketch a quick impression. It conducts no literature review; its sample size and sampling method are nowhere near large or sophisticated enough to approach statistical validity.

If the not particularly rosy outlook holds, it will prove a bitter irony that those most likely to further damage the health of our nation are also those who most loudly champion their individual liberty to reject anything they find inconvenient or controlling. Mask denialism, we might call this phenomenon, refuses to inconvenience the spread of a biological virus in the name of that most infectious idea-virus of anti-authority individualist liberty. No one can be against liberty along, but, since it can justify almost any position, the fact deserves further research that anti-maskers appear to speed our nation’s sicknesses and bondage in times of pandemics.

Finally, an anecdotal observation of my own view to date: in this course of this preliminary study, I have encountered countless claims that wildly escalate the perceived risks of wearing masks (e.g., wearing masks is tantamount to child abuse, the next step on a slippery slope to tyranny by vaccines, a boon to a surveillance state that benefits Bill Gates, etc.), but none of them have to my view addressed or weakened the actual baseline position of medical experts: in times of pandemics, it is better to try to stop COVID-19 airborne droplets from entering and exiting our mouths and noses than not — and that masks, together with social distancing and hand washing, are the most effective way to do so.

Something is better than nothing. Wear a mask.

[1] Benjamin Peters, PhD, bjpeters@gmail.com, @bjpeters, benjaminpeters.org; anonymized survey results available upon request.