Moral Foundations and Mask Use: Worldview Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented many unique challenges to governments across the nation and around the world. One such issue is how to handle the issue of face masks in a remarkably polarized environment. While the research seems to indicate that a high rate of masking is important to managing the spread of COVID-19, a subset of the population has shown themselves reluctant to adopt regular mask usage. With much of this divide taking place along partisan lines, this research sought to better understand the worldview impact on mask usage by using an approach informed by moral foundations theory. This research shows that there does exist a positive relationship between the individualizing foundations (which are often favoured by political liberals) and voluntary mask usage, but no meaningful relationship is apparent between masking and the binding foundations favoured by conservatives. Furthermore, while the relationship between masking and political ideology is stronger than the relationship between masking and any of the moral foundations, political conservatives’ reluctance to mask appears to somewhat diminish the more they associate with mainstream political parties. While moral foundations-based appeals may still have some utility in this area, several more generic policy tools that were not directly tailored to particular moral foundations also showed themselves promising. These positive indicators suggest that future government efforts to encourage masking, in addition to the somewhat definitive solution of mask mandates, may have a range of softer tools through which they can effectively reach their target