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When the pandemic first started, wearing a mask was very awkward since you were in the minority. You were "avoided" or looked at weirdly. People experience this weirdness at different intensities. I personally didn't feel very comfortable standing out as the Mask Guy.

As more people started wearing masks and mask wearing became a majority phenomenon this awkwardness decreased to near 0. People are affected by this "majority validation" to different degrees.

If you have a high propensity for groupthink, either due to cultural conditioning or just personal experience, this validation can even become an obligation. You'll feel intense shame/guilt if you don't follow the majority.

You can argue that anti-maskers are outliers on the groupthink susceptibility spectrum. They don't care what the majority think. This can manifest as independent thinking as well as stubbornness or willful ignorance.

(People in bubbles also have a different sense of majority since they're insulated from the "actual" majority.)

People who *do* wear masks often bemoan the politicization of refusing to wear masks, as if they're childishly proving a point. Yet they'll also ignore the entire country of Sweden doing the same thing. They politicizing it as well to draw a line between good/bad smart/stupid.

The more centralized a culture is (e.g. Japan, China, are more centralized relative to the U.S.) the less friction there is for mass coordination since there's less questioning of things. In extreme cases like nationalism, this lack of questioning is a responsibility.

In an organization like a military, which is glued together by nationalist-like energy, questioning things is actively stamped out.