Results
Participants
Only participants who completed the study in full (n = 74) were included in the data analysis.
Out of the 74 participants that completed the study, 66 were female (89.2%), 7 were male (9.5%), and 1 (1.3%) preferred not to answer.
Participants who completed this study were between 21 and 72 years old (M = 36.96 years, SD = 12.97 years), and were primarily Caucasian (n = 67, 90.5%).
Education levels of participants varied widely, with most participants having completed a bachelor’s degree (n = 25; 33.8%). 21.6% of participants cited completing an associate degree (n = 16), followed by 18% (n = 14) citing some college education and 12.5% (n = 10) a master’s degree. A small number of participants completed a Ph.D. or higher (5.4%, n = 4), while the remaining participants cited completing either a high school (n = 2, 2.7%) or trade school (n = 2, 2.7%) education. Only one participant endorsed only completing some high school (1.4%).
![[Untitled]](https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/studentsymposium2021/files/fullsize/fc62ab5316cb481296ebf8d473075a8e.jpg "[Untitled]")
Experiment 1 results.
Experiment 1
A significant effect of mask wearing was found (t(73) = 3.02, p = .003; Cohen’s d = .351).
Participants underestimated the distances of non-masked virtual characters (M = - 0.11, SD = .51) more often than they did masked characters (M = - 0.02, SD = .50).
This indicates that participants perceived the virtual characters to be closer when not wearing a mask than when they were wearing one.
![[Untitled]](https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/studentsymposium2021/files/fullsize/c32ae2b2fd3bf99019c6b759aeee2cb0.jpg "[Untitled]")
Experiment 2 results.
Experiment 2
A 2 (Mask vs No Mask) x 2 (Friend vs Stranger) within-subject ANOVA was conducted to examine the effect of mask presence/absence and familiarity on participant mean error distance estimates of a virtual character.
A significant main effect of mask-wearing was found (F(1,73) = 6.203, p = .015, ηp2 = .078).
This suggests that participants tended to perceive virtual characters to be closer when not wearing a mask than when they were wearing one.
Both the main effect of familiarity (F(1,73) = .103, p = .749, ηp2 = .001) and the mask wearing by familiarity interaction (F(1,73) = .893, p = .348, ηp2 = .012) were found to be non-significant.
![[Untitled]](https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/studentsymposium2021/files/fullsize/f6cf3a8d9e2e6089931944b8db992d00.jpg "[Untitled]")
Correlation table for study variables.
Additional Analyses
Correlations were conducted to examine associations between demographic variables (age, education) and single-item measures (fear ratings) with the main variables of interest (differences in distance error scores for each experiment).
Gender and ethnicity variables were not examined due to the disproportionate number of responses in each category.
*Difference scores for each experiment were calculated by taking the average masked error scores and subtracting them from average non-masked error scores.
Participant error scores were positively correlated with education (r(74) = .245, p = .036). This means that for more educated participants, mask-wearing made a bigger difference than for less-educated participants.
Participant age and fear rating was marginally significant (r(74) = -.219, p = .061), indicating a non-significant trend that as participant age decreased, perceived fear ratings increased.