How do masks affect our shopping behaviour? And what can brands do about it? Along with some entertaining diversions into embarrassing products, hedonistic urges, judging others and how not to be creepy (or not as creepy).

In the 90s, Respro masks were all the rage for cyclists in London. Filtering out the pollution and lending something of a Dick Turpin air to the wearer.

Walking, masked up, into shops this weekend alongside others, triggered a little nostalgia but also a question: how does this new apparel change our buying behaviour? And what can brands do about it?

Interestingly, before Covid, Alice Robb reported on how facial covering affected moral behaviour - referring to research at Toronto University examining how wearing sunglasses affected moral behaviour.

In the study (Zhong, 2010), respondents reported feeling more anonymous and their behaviour was seen to be quantifiably less generous.

Presciently, Alice’s article also started to investigate the impact of masks.

In 1976 a study (Mathes and Guest, 1976) asking participants how willing they would be, and how much they would have to be paid, to carry a sign which said “masturbation is fun” around the university cafeteria.

This was 1976, remember.

They discovered that people were more likely to carry the sign and required less money to do so ($30 compared to $48, on average) when they wore a mask.

This might mean a change of approach for purveyors of “embarrassing” products.

Research in Harvard Business review suggested “that for products consumers find embarrassing to buy — for example, condoms, acne cream, hemorrhoid cream, and lice shampoo — having packaging that stands out may reduce consumers’ purchase intentions”.

Instead, they suggested that “the more anonymous a product looks, the less embarrassing a consumer finds it, and the more likely they are to purchase it”. They also suggested to avoid “displays on the end of an aisle” which were "more embarrassing, which caused anxiety” and that people “were likely to avoid them in favor of an in-aisle location”.

The dissolving of our masked-up customers inhibitions may indeed create new opportunities for brands and products who have hitherto shunned the spotlight?

Presenting Halloween trick-or-treaters with sweets, Miller and Rowold (1979) also suggested that masks can “lead to lower restraints on behaviour”.

Children were told they could take two chocolates each. Thinking they weren’t being watched, they helped themselves. Children without a mask broke the rule, taking more chocolates, 37% of the time, compared to 62% for masked children.

This may create opportunities for brands that customers believe they should not buy – or believe that others might judge them for?

Because when it comes to brands, a study at the Universities of Delaware and Minnesota (Park, Roedder John, 2017), suggested that you ARE judged by others (at least some of them) for the brands you buy and use.

Park claims “there are still people with a fixed mindset whose perceptions of others are influenced by brand choices”, advising that “to appeal to consumers who do not want to be judged by the fixed mindset population, marketers could offer certain products that minimize the display of the brand's name on the item”.

But a less concerned, masked-up buyer, could open up new opportunities for chocolatiers, luxury sports cars and other brands that people might feel guilty about buying .

In fact, the disinhibiting effects of masks are described by psychologists in terms of a suspension of the superego’s control mechanisms, allowing subconscious impulses to take over.

Caillois wrote in 1962 about masked carnivals in Europe involving such activities as “indecencies, jostling, provocative laughter, exposed breasts, mimicking buffoonery, a permanent incitement to riot, feasting and excessive talk, noise and movement”.

Experimental research (Cooper, 1999) found “that a mask can significantly reduces its wearer’s feelings of identifiability, and that it can also significantly reduce its wearer’s public self awareness as a consequence of changes in attentional focus”.

But it’s not quite the free-for-all that Caillois described. Copper continues to reveal that “the empirical evidence suggests that the mask’s disinhibiting effect is limited to situations in which an individual wants to behave in a particular way".

This suggests an opportunity for brands to tap into more hedonistic motivations.

There is also an aspect for brands to be wary of, based on a behaviour often seen online. The online disinhibition effect refers to the tendency for people to act anti-socially when anonymous online (Suler, 2004).

Masked customers might need reminding to act socially – encouraging helping of others who need it and discouraging shoplifting and abusing staff – if their inhibitions might not constrain them quite so much.

And what about communicating to audiences who may have increased anti-social tendencies? Well, agreeable people tend to prefer warm, sociable content and are less open to, for example, swearing. So as this factor declines, audiences may be more open, if not to swearing, then perhaps more challenging, less traditionally “comfortable” marketing.

What of masks’ effect on others? And what to do about that?

In her article - https://sites.psu.edu/siowfa16/2016/09/14/what-makes-scary-things-scary/, Rebecca Jordan

Polaha explores how masks “hide the social interaction between others and eliminate normal emotion” and as a result “one can not tell if the person under the mask can possible threaten, or harm them.”

She picks up on a fascinating short film from Michael Stevens where he, offers some explanations of why – along with some amusing asides about the terrifying nature of certain children’s books were in days gone by – masks can induce a sense of fear.

They talk about how it is ambiguity that creates the threat. And talk about “uncanny valley” – when something is close to human, but “slightly off” – as illustrated scientifically and more viscerally below.

So how to brands with a people-first, face to face delivery handle this?

Well, there’s some simple good news.

According to “deception detection” expert Dr. Paul Ekman is that a “true enjoyment” smile or Duchenne smile – most frequently identified by wrinkling around the eyes (the orbicularis oculi muscle, if you’re interested) can be seen over a facemask.

Like many things in life, if in doubt, smile. Oh and take off your sunglasses.

What to do next?

These studies, whilst all scientific, are not always conducted on large volumes of subjects, and they are almost certainly not conducted on your customers. So it’s unlikely that they will all apply, and all provide the answer to the questions of the moment.

However, all scientific endeavours start with a solid hypothesis and it is in this spirit that these are offered. If they spark a thought, an idea, or a change that you can test (and measure) in your business, then they have done their job.

And if you’d like to speak more about practically applying behavioural science for hard, commercial results, do get in touch.

Dan.

PS The research unearthed two other insights which, whilst not entirely germane to the post, are worthy of sharing.

The first is from Robert F. Murphy at Columbia University, 1964, who studying the effects of face masks, spoke back then of social distancing.

He identified and elegantly articulated the challenges of social life as revolving around “interaction between groups and on preferences of propinquity. Of central concern is the axis between antipathy and affection, as expressed in marriage, residence, and other choices”.

One of his conclusions was that wearing a mask in society offers the benefit of “providing neither isolation nor anonymity, bestows facelessness and the idiom of privacy upon its wearer and allows him to stand somewhat aloof from the perils of social interaction while remaining a part of it”

The second insight is not nearly so profound. It discusses why crows were not frightened of a Dick Cheney mask.

DT