As this article was being prepared an act of violence at a restaurant in Aurora, Colorado punctuated the need to get to the bottom of why a facemask is evolving into a symbol of reaction among people.
KDVR-TV reports a 27-year-old is being charged with attempted first-degree murder after allegedly shooting a Waffle House employee after being asked to put on a facemask.
This is an extreme example of the kind of divisive behavior people are beginning to display over requirements to mask up in this time of the COVID-19 pandemic.
We went to Dr. Damian Murray, Associate Professor of Psychology at Tulane University for answers.
“I think if you these acute events that call for cultural changes you’re going to have people on both sides of the issue that don’t like people on the other side,” Dr. Murray says.
Diving deeper into the topic Murray describes a past cultural change—smoking—that was met with reaction:
“You can compare it to smoking when a lot of restaurants when they started to ban smoking there were a lot of people who decided they were going to keep smoking in restaurants and that caused a lot of tension, so I think you’re going to see the same thing with masks.”
Ultimately anti-smoking efforts and legislation evolved and cigarettes were banished to outdoor areas. But as far as violence, if there were any incidents of violence over the prohibition of smoking it wasn’t readily mentioned.
Last Friday’s incident in Colorado follows an incident in California where shoppers, not wearing masks, attacked security guards who were escorting them out of a store for not masking up.
“I think there’s just a big divide in how much people perceive this risk that to actually pose to themselves,” Murray continues. “There are people who think masks are really low-cost preventative behavior, whereas other people see it as a signal of government repression.”
“I think you see that falling along the political lines of America,” Murray says signifying we’re breaking into two familiar tribes each with their own beliefs about how it should be.
“The attitude toward masks are falling a lot down political lines,” Murray suggests. “It’s unfortunate often in times of national crisis you’ll see the opposite, you’ll see people politically opposed to actually uniting more but that doesn’t appear to be the case in this COVID-19 pandemic.”
