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Background: Previous research suggests that child marriage may be accelerated during times of crisis and insecurity as resources are scarce and child marriage may be a survival strategy for girls and their families. In 2017, the Rohingya experienced a mass displacement to Bangladesh in response to escalating violence in Myanmar. This displacement has resulted in an estimated population of nearly 1 million Rohingya living in Cox's Bazar. Methods: We conducted in-depth interviews (n = 48) and focus group discussions (n = 12) with Rohingya male and female adolescents and young adults (14-24 years), and program managers and service providers (n = 24) working in Cox's Bazar to understand their experience of living or working in the camps, preferences for timing of marriage, and marriage practices in Myanmar and in the camps. We also interviewed Bangladeshis in the host community to complement our understanding of marriage in the camps and its influence in the broader community. Our primary objective was to describe how displacement influenced marriage timing and practices. Results: We found that child marriage is a strong cultural phenomenon among the Rohingya, primarily rooted in socio-cultural and religious beliefs around readiness for marriage. Although child marriage was practiced by the Rohingya in Myanmar, specific state law and oppression by military forces prevented many from marrying before age 18. Now this preference is more easily practiced in the camps in Bangladesh where the displaced Rohingya experience less marriage regulation. Host community participants perceive the presence of the Rohingya as encouraging both polygamy and child marriage in their communities, leading to tension among the host community.Conclusions: Our findings support evidence that conflict and displacement increase child marriage in populations already vulnerable to child marriage by exacerbating gender inequities. However, our findings also suggest group norms around religious and cultural preferences for age at marriage play a significant role in post-displacement behaviors surrounding marriage.

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Face masks slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2, but it has been unknown whether masks influence how individuals communicate emotion through facial expressions. Masks could influence how accurately—or how quickly—individuals perceive expressions, and how rapidly they accumulate evidence for emotion. Over two independent pre-registered studies, conducted three and six months into the COVID-19 pandemic, participants judged expressions of 6 emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise) with the lower or upper face “masked” or unmasked. Participants in Study 1 (N = 228) identified expressions above chance with lower face masks. However, they were less likely—and slower—to correctly identify these expressions versus without masks, and they accumulated evidence for emotion more slowly—via decreased drift rate in drift-diffusion modeling. This pattern replicated and intensified three months later in Study 2 (N = 264). These data could inform interventions to promote mask wearing by addressing concerns with emotion communication.