“…A limited body of research suggests that greater distances are kept when others are improperly perceived as contagious (i.e., people with AIDS) or as a threat to an individual's health (Mooney, Cohn, & Swift, 1992;Toppenberg, Bos, Ruiter, Wigboldus, & Pryor, 2015). Moreover, two studies conducted during the first COVID-19 outbreak (Cartaud, Quesque, & Coello, 2020;Iachini et al, 2020) showed that a smaller IPD was preferred when the other person was wearing a mask. One possible interpretation is that the sight of a person wearing a face mask triggers a feeling of safety.…”