There have been precious few positives during the Covid pandemic but British academics may have unearthed one: people look more attractive in protective masks. “Our study suggests faces are considered most attractive when covered by medical face masks. Forty-three women were asked to rate on a scale of one to 10 the attractiveness of images of male faces without a mask, wearing a plain cloth mask, a blue medical face mask, and holding a plain black book covering the area a face mask would hide. The participants said those wearing a cloth mask were significantly more attractive than the ones with no masks or whose faces were partly obscured by the book. Now we can observe a shift in our psychology such that face masks are no longer acting as a contamination cue.”Lewis said it was also possible that masks made people more attractive because they directed attention to the eyes.

Source: The Guardian January 14, 2022 11:06 UTC