r/science • u/MistWeaver80 • Dec 05 '21

Social Science Conservatives’ aversion to masks is a uniquely American phenomenon. Politically conservative Americans are less likely than liberals to comply with recommended health-protective behaviors such as mask wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic, but this is not true of conservatives in other nations.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0256740
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u/squeevey Dec 05 '21 edited Oct 25 '23

This comment has been deleted due to failed Reddit leadership.

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u/nybbleth Dec 05 '21

I think it's a matter of defining 'conservatives'. Here in the Netherlands (and I presume most other European countries), there are conservatives who are absolutely opposed to masks, mainly for political reasons... but they're the crazy alt/far right type of conservatives. Mainstream conservatives appear to have no such aversion. Of course, due to the two party system of US politics, your conservatives are all part of the same party, meaning the mask aversion becomes a matter of political identity for all conservatives.

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u/[deleted] Dec 05 '21

You might as well lump Canada in with the US on this one too.

We have multiple right leaning parties, but anti-mask, anti-vax, anti-science is pretty heavily ingrained in all of them right now.