The Masks We Wear: Facial Coverings and Perceived Instructor Ideology

Many Americans have expressed reluctance, even hostility, towards the government mandating the wearing of face coverings. Not surprisingly, these beliefs are highly correlated with partisanship and ideology. With this in mind, this project investigates the role that mask-wearing plays in how students perceive the ideology of their professors. Based on previous research on ideological projection (see Kelly-Woessner and Woessner (2006); Woessner and Kelly-Woessner (2009, 2020); Braidwood and Ausderan (2017; 2022); Woessner and Maranto (2021)), we expected that the wearing of a facial covering (i.e. a mask) will prime students to make ideological inferences regarding their instructor. Namely, we expected that, ceteris paribus, students will assume a mask-wearing professor is more liberal than the same professor who is maskless. Relying on student subjects and hypothetical professors, we designed an original survey experiment to measure the effect that mask wearing has on perceived instructor ideology. Contrary to expectations, we found mask wearing has no significant impact on students’ views of their instructors’ ideology.