Something I was told when I was new to training in martial arts is that lighter gloves used in MMA and, for example, traditional karate dojos (simple cotton gloves with light padding -- same design as many MMA gloves, just different materials) simply protect your hands, not the other person's face.

Boxing gloves, by contrast, can and do cause the same sort of faulty reasoning as football helmets when education isn't properly included: there's padding, therefore I can hit harder. Except, no, it (clearly) doesn't work that way. Certainly not when mass is a variable in the equation.