MAINE, USA — A University of Maine study is seeking to understand the long term psychological effects of wearing masks in public.
The #Selfie4Science will support COVID-19-related research at the school. The University of Maine's Assistant Professor of Psychology Mollie Ruben is interested in learning about people’s social perceptions and biases related to face masks, including race, gender, and age.
Anyone interested in taking part in the study is encouraged to visit the University of Maine Face Mask Database. You will be asked to send in two photos of yourself to the University, one with a mask on and another without.
Along with those pictures, there is a questionnaire that will help them toward the study's ultimate goal.
“Our final goal is to make some statements about what a face mask does to communication, in hopes that we could create some type of intervention to reduce some of the negative affects we think facemasks may have on folks,” Mollie Ruben, the Assistant Professor of Psychology, told NEWS CENTER Maine.
At NEWS CENTER Maine, we're focusing our news coverage on the facts and not the fear around the illness. To see our full coverage, visit our coronavirus section, here: /coronavirus
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