Why Some People Refuse to Wear COVID Masks

Consider seven reasons for resistance to public health measures.

Thomas Henricks Ph.D.
The Pathways of Experience
Posted Dec 06, 2020

All of us have tasks we don’t enjoy. We grumble about hauling the garbage to the street, cleaning the toilet, or taking the dog out at night. However, we also know that these jobs need doing and it is our responsibility to do them. They serve purposes we acknowledge. That ability, to command our lazier or more rebellious impulses, is what it means to be an adult. Or so we tell ourselves.

More difficult to accept are duties assigned to us by others, or even by society as a whole. Laws tell us to fasten seat belts, and observe speed limits, while driving. We are to wear a helmet when riding a motorcycle or bicycle. We need hunting and fishing licenses before pursuing those activities. We must submit to background checks before buying firearms. We cannot dump trash wherever we want. We have to pay taxes.

Some people see these basic responsibilities of citizenship as infringements on liberty. They view the United States as a country that grants individuals the right to do whatever they want when they want. And woe to anyone who interferes with that quest.

I describe these matters because of an article in the news a couple days ago about a bowling alley manager in Maryland who asked a group of his patrons to wear masks. That group of eight men beat him severely, with punches and kicks, before leaving the premises. They remain at large.

This is surely an extreme case. But most of us have seen unmasked individuals in stores, malls, sports arenas, airports, and other places of public congregation. In college towns, like the one I live in, it is easy to spot mask-less students partying.

Based on my own observations, I can report that most of the non-compliers are white. They are usually under the age of fifty. If clothing is an indicator, they seem to be working class or middle class. Most are men, but there are also many women. Tattoos are common; so are t-shirts with gun and motorcycle themes. Profoundly, they have a defiant look in their eyes as if daring someone to say something to them.

None of this would matter were the corona virus not raging in the nation. Record numbers are finding themselves infected, and dying. The health experts tell us the best course is to wear a mask, wash our hands, and maintain distance from others. We are to do this not just to protect ourselves but also to protect other people. So why do some people refuse? Below are seven reasons.

Denial. It is perhaps human nature to minimize the dangers we face and by that act to gain confidence for our daily affairs. In that spirit, we sometimes eat and drink excessively, speed in our cars, fudge on our taxes, cheat on our partners, and so forth. What’s the harm? Anyway, we won’t get caught.

Denial can feature a dismissal of circumstances (“I don’t see this as a problem”) and of consequence (“I don’t think this will affect me or the people I care about”). There is denial of involvement (“I’m not part of this situation”) and of responsibility (“I’m not to blame for what is happening”).

Those who refuse to wear masks during these virus times may tell themselves all these things. Refusers can say they don’t know anyone who has gotten the virus. They may claim the virus is concentrated in communities different from their own and far away from them. Most of the people who die from this pandemic are over 65 or have preexisting health problems, so this problem, or so the refuser thinks, is unlikely to affect “them.” Extremely, and some do say this, the whole matter is a “hoax.” At any rate, they are not responsible for other people’s problems.article continues after advertisement

Fatalism. I had a colleague-friend who served as a fighter pilot in three wars (World War II, Korea, and Viet Nam). He and his fellow pilots faced danger by believing that they would complete their missions until their “number was up.” As they saw it, there are many factors beyond one’s control. At some point, people bow to fate.

Religious people may rephrase this by affirming that their life is in God’s hands. If God decides that I ˗ or my loved ones ˗ must suffer, so be it.

Some people take that attitude toward the virus. “Let God’s will be done.” It is a curious combination of comfort and bravado, which is easier to maintain when other people are victims of the scourge. When family and friends start to fall, the bravado pales.

Fear of Change. Contemporary societies are replete with change. Populations grow. Urban settlements extend. There are new patterns of immigration, travel, and international commerce. The occupational structure shifts. Technology creates new possibilities of living. Nature itself strains under all this trafficking.

Most of us adjust to such changes and address them as we can. Our beliefs, manners, and activities are different from those of our parents and grandparents. But others do not change so easily. Particularly in rural areas and small towns, people hold to older models of living. Certain visions of family, faith, and fortitude prevail. There is resistance to rules established by distant and differently situated others, especially as enactments of federal government. There is some sense that people should “know their place” or “stay with their own kind.” The dominant members of the community defend these customs as “our ways of living.”article continues after advertisement

Oriented by beliefs like these, refusers may equate the current virus with these modern changes. The disease is presumably a foreign import (the “China Flu,” as the President called it). Initially, it spread fastest within urban areas and dense settlements like nursing homes and factories. Minority people suffered disproportionately. It has resulted in recommendations and mandates from state and national leaders. Those recommendations rely on the scientific knowledge of highly educated “experts.” Are these distant others the same people who would restrict gun rights, impose environmental regulations, promote same-sex marriages, support high levels of immigration, encourage advancements for women and minorities, facilitate abortions, and otherwise weaken local and family authority? Are “we” with “our” taxes to pay for “their” changes?

The cult of self-interest. Most of us would acknowledge that we have commitments to self-protection and self-satisfaction. Again, those tendencies are probably in our nature, drives that help us survive. However, few of us would defend rampant individualism as a style of life appropriate to a vast, complicated society like the United States.

That said, our country does encourage us to guard our rights for self-determination, to make “free” choices to go places and do things, and then to decorate ourselves with our possessions and accomplishments. We are, by most accounts, a status-oriented, acquisitive people. At least that is what we learn from the marketing division of our businesses. article continues after advertisement

Unfortunately, the deeper lesson of such acquisition is that people should armor themselves with private property and protect those domains strenuously from intruders. Guns, dogs, fences, and the like are part of the plan. In the same way, we may resist deep involvement with people beyond our immediate families. We learn to trust our own judgment, even when we know little about the issues at hand.

The virus has aggravated some of those tendencies. In part, that means limiting our contacts with people outside our households. Mask wearers do this to protect themselves – and to protect others. Mask refusers care little about the germs they spread to others. And if other people are wearing masks, that reduces the danger to them. In both instances, selfishness prevails.
The shame-anger conversion. All of us are sensitive to issues of social respect – and disrespect. If challenged on these matters, we push back. Those tendencies magnify in a country dominated by an individualist mythology, one where where most people consider themselves different from others or even “unique.”article continues after advertisement

Unfortunately, respect is unequally distributed. Some people experience diminished economic standing, difficult lives, and general social disregard. They – and people like them – are not the subjects of television shows and movies. Rarely do leaders consult them on matters of public policy. Although their work is extremely important for the running of the nation, they receive little recognition, or appropriate pay and benefits, for this service.

Higher placed people may demean that large swath of Americans as less educated, mean-spirited, and backward in their beliefs. Their commitment to family and local community may stand at odds with broad visions of societal transformation. Seemingly, so does their religious traditionalism.

For some then, mask refusal is an act of defiance against those who claim to “know better” than they do. Psychologist Helen Lewis explained how the sense of “unacknowledged shame” (based on longstanding threats to social reputability) sometimes spills as aggression. After all, anger feels good. Anger makes others feel bad. Angry displays may reset the balance of relationships, if only for the moment.

Group loyalty. Our individualist culture encourages us to make our own choices and live with the consequences. However, few of us operate that way. We have families and friends. We gather with community members, workmates, and church members. Although we present our attitudes as our own, they arise through these social filters.

It matters then that groups of people hold similar beliefs. The eight unmasked men at the bowling alley were there together. So are the unmasked kids at the campus parties. Commonly, one sees groups of working people, uniformly masked or oppositely, unmasked. Even mask refusers in stores and other places of public congregation can spot others of their ilk. All that lends a kind of courage, an affirmation that the refusers’ ways are reasonable.

It compounds the matter when vast numbers of the public, assembled as a political party, are sympathetic to these views. Or when the highest-ranking politicians minimize the danger of the situation. “Is the crisis overblown? People I trust seem to think so.”

Countervailing Information. Throughout American history, people have held opposing political beliefs and expressed these in their voting. Everyone anticipated that the banker and factory owner would vote one way and the laboring man another. For the most part, people kept their views to themselves. Placards and flags were not prominent on neighborhood lawns. After the election, people accepted the fact that their candidate had won or lost and moved ahead with their lives.

Nowadays, political beliefs are consolidated and maintained. A good portion of this is due to media sources, that is, certain television channels, radio stations, and websites that people can turn to for one-sided versions of current events. These outlets are extensive enough that one need not listen to broader-based, or public-minded, commentators for any their news. Indeed, there are publicly circulated extremist viewpoints that the virus is one part of a vast political conspiracy by a “deep state” bureaucracy to unseat a popular President and to replace him with someone more congenial to their progressive agenda.

In all these ways, mask refusers finds their rationales, leaders, and allies. Firmly stationed, they will not disappear soon. Nor is it likely that they will capitulate to the next stage of the battle, the quest for national vaccination.


About the Author


Thomas Henricks, Ph.D., is Danieley Professor of Sociology and Distinguished University Professor at Elon University.