The Role of Personality in COVID-19-Related Perceptions,Evaluations,and Behaviors: Findings Across Five Samples,Nine Traits,and 17 Criteria

Abstract

Individuals and institutions around the world have been affected by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Herein, we investigate the role of basic (Big Five and HEXACO) and specific (Dark Factor of Personality, Narcissistic Rivalry, and Narcissistic Admiration) personality traits for 17 criteria related to COVID-19, grouped into (i) personal perceptions in terms of risks and worries about the disease, (ii) behavioral adjustments in terms of following health recommendations and hoarding, and (iii) societal evaluations in terms of the appropriateness of different measures and feelings of social cohesion. (Internal) Meta-analytic results across five samples from two countries (overall N = 19,718) show—next to gender and age effects—the importance of several traits, including Emotionality/Neuroticism for personal perceptions and anti- or prosocial traits for behavior in line with health recommendations. The investigation highlights the importance of individual differences in uncertain and changing situations in general and during the COVID-19 pandemic in particular.

Keywords

COVID-19 personality HEXACO Big Five narcissism dark factor of personality

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Arslan

R. C.

Walther

M. P.

Tata

C. S.

(2020). formr: A study framework allowing for automated feedback generation and complex longitudinal experience-sampling studies using R. Behavior Research Methods, 52, 376–387. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-019-01236-y

Aschwanden

Strickhouser

J. E.

Sesker

A. A.

Lee

J. H.

Luchetti

Stephan

Sutin

A. R.

Terracciano

(2021). Psychological and behavioural responses to coronavirus disease 2019: The role of personality. European Journal of Personality, 35, 51–66. https://doi.org/10.1002/per.2281

Ashton

M. C.

Lee

(2007). Empirical, theoretical, and practical advantages of the HEXACO model of personality structure. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11, 150–166. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868306294907

Ashton

M. C.

Lee

(2009). The HEXACO-60: A short measure of the major dimensions of personality. Journal of Personality Assessment, 91, 340–345. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223890902935878

Ashton

M. C.

Lee

Visser

B. A.

(2019). Where’s the H? Relations between BFI-2 and HEXACO-60 scales. Personality and Individual Differences, 137, 71–75. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2018.08.013

Back

M. D.

Küfner

A. C. P.

Dufner

Gerlach

T. M.

Rauthmann

J. F.

Denissen

J. J. A.

(2013). Narcissistic admiration and rivalry: Disentangling the bright and dark sides of narcissism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 105, 1013–1037. http://doi.org/10.1037/a0034431

Blagov

P. S.

(2020). Adaptive and dark personality in the COVID-19 pandemic: Predicting health-behavior endorsement and the appeal of public-health messages. Social Psychological and Personality Science. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550620936439

Brouard

Vasilopoulos

Becher

(2020). Sociodemographic and psychological correlates of compliance with the COVID-19 public health measures in France. Canadian Journal of Political Science, 53, 253–258. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008423920000335

Caci

Miceli

Scrima

Cardaci

(2020). Neuroticism and fear of COVID-19. The interplay between boredom, fantasy engagement, and perceived control over time. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 574393. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.574393

10.

Carvalho

L. de F.

Pianowski

Gonçalves

A. P.

(2020). Personality differences and COVID-19: Are extroversion and conscientiousness personality traits associated with engagement with containment measures? Trends in Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, 42, 179–184. http://doi.org/10.1590/2237-6089-2020-0029

11.

Caspi

Moffitt

T. E.

(1993). When do individual differences matter? A paradoxical theory of personality coherence. Psychological Inquiry, 4(4), 247–271. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327965pli0404_1

12.

Cheng

Barceló

Hartnett

A. S.

Kubinec

Messerschmidt

(2020). COVID-19 Government Response Event Dataset (CoronaNet v.1.0). Nature Human Behavior, 4, 756–768. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-0909-7

13.

Clark

Davila

Regis

Kraus

(2020). Predictors of COVID-19 voluntary compliance behaviors: An international investigation. Global Transitions, 2, 76–82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.glt.2020.06.003

14.

De Vries

R. E.

(2013). The 24-item Brief HEXACO Inventory (BHI). Journal of Research in Personality, 47, 871–880. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2013.09.003

15.

Funder

D. C.

Ozer

D. J.

(2019). Evaluating effect size in psychological research: Sense and nonsense. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 2, 156–168. https://doi.org/10.1177/2515245919847202

16.

Garbe

Rau

Toppe

(2020). Influence of perceived threat of Covid-19 and HEXACO personality traits on toilet paper stockpiling. PLoS One, 15(6), e0234232 . https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0234232

17.

Gignac

G. E.

Szodorai

E. T.

(2016). Effect size guidelines for individual differences researchers. Personality and Individual Differences, 102, 74–78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.06.069

18.

Goldberg

M. H.

Gustafson

Maibach

E. W.

Ballew

M. T.

Bergquist

Kotcher

J. E.

Marlon

J. R.

Rosenthal

S. A.

Leiserowitz

(2020). Mask-wearing increased after a government recommendation: A natural experiment in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic. Frontiers in Communication, 5(44). https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2020.00044

19.

Gollwitzer

Martel

Marshall

Höhs

J. M.

Bargh

J. A.

(2020, May 5). Connecting self-reported social distancing to real-world behavior at the individual and U.S. state level. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/kvnwp

20.

Harper

C. A.

Satchell

L. P.

Fido

Latzman

R. D.

(2020). Functional fear predicts public health compliance in the COVID-19 pandemic. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-020-00281-5

21.

Hisler

G. C.

Krizan

DeHart

Wright

A. G. C.

(2020). Neuroticism as the intensity, reactivity, and variability in day-to-day affect. Journal of Research in Personality, 87, 103964. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2020.103964

22.

IJzerman

Lewis

N. A.

Jr Przybylski

A. K.

Weinstein

DeBruine

Ritchie

S. J.

Vazire

Forscher

P. S.

Morey

R. D.

Ivory

J. D.

Anvari

(2020). Use caution when applying behavioural science to policy. Nature Human Behavior, 4, 1092–1094. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-00990-w

23.

Kotov

Gamez

Schmidt

Watson

(2010). Linking “big” personality traits to anxiety, depressive, and substance use disorders: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 768–821. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0020327

24.

Kroencke

Geukes

Utesch

Kuper

Back

M. D.

(2020). Neuroticism and emotional risk during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Research in Personality, 89, 104038. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2020.104038

25.

Leckelt

Wetzel

Gerlach

T. M.

Ackerman

R. A.

Miller

J. D.

Chopik

W. J.

Penke

Geukes

Küfner

A. C. P.

Hutteman

Richter

Renner

K.-H.

Allroggen

Brecheen

Campbell

W. K.

Grossmann

Back

M. D.

(2018). Validation of the narcissistic admiration and rivalry questionnaire short scale (NARQ-S) in convenience and representative samples. Psychological Assessment, 30, 86–96. https://doi.org/10.1037/pas0000433

26.

Liu

Lithopoulos

Zhang

C.-Q.

Garcia-Barrera

M. A.

Rhodes

R. E.

(2020). Personality and perceived stress during COVID-19 pandemic: Testing the mediating role of perceived threat and efficacy. Personality and Individual Differences, 168, 110351. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.110351

27.

Modersitzki

Phan

L. V.

Kuper

Rauthmann

J. F.

(2020). Who is impacted? Personality predicts individual differences in psychological consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. Social Psychological and Personality Science. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550620952576

28.

Moshagen

Hilbig

B. E.

Zettler

(2018). The dark core of personality. Psychological Review, 125, 656–688. http://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000111

29.

Moshagen

Zettler

Hilbig

B. E.

(2020). Measuring the dark core of personality. Psychological Assessment, 32, 182–196. https://doi.org/10.1037/pas0000778

30.

Nowak

Brzóska

Piotrowski

Sedikides

Żemojtel-Piotrowska

Jonason

P. K.

(2020). Adaptive and maladaptive behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic: The roles of Dark Triad traits, collective narcissism, and health beliefs. Personality and Individual Differences, 167, 110232. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.110232

31.

Nowok

Raab

G. M.

Dibben

(2016). synthpop: Bespoke creation of synthetic data in R. Journal of Statistical Software, 74. https://www.jstatsoft.org/article/view/v074i11

32.

Ozer

D. J.

Benet-Martínez

(2006). Personality and the prediction of consequential outcomes. Annual Review of Psychology, 57, 401–421. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.57.102904.190127

33.

Pennycook

McPhetres

Zhang

J. G.

Rand

D. G.

(2020). Fighting COVID-19 misinformation on social media: Experimental evidence for a scalable accuracy-nudge intervention. Psychological Science, 31, 770–780. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620939054

34.

Schwarzer

(2021). meta: General package for meta-analysis (4.16-2) [Computer software]. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=meta

35.

Shrout

P. E.

Rodgers

J. L.

(2018). Psychology, science, and knowledge construction: Broadening perspectives from the replication crisis. Annual Review of Psychology, 69, 487–510. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-122216-011845

36.

Soto

C. J.

(2019). How replicable are links between personality traits and consequential life outcomes? The life outcomes of personality replication project. Psychological Science, 30, 711–727. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797619831612

37.

Soto

C. J.

(2021). Do links between personality and life outcomes generalize? Testing the robustness of trait–outcome associations across gender, age, ethnicity, and analytic approaches. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 12, 118–130. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550619900572

38.

Soto

C. J.

John

O. P.

(2017). The next Big Five Inventory (BFI-2): Developing and assessing a hierarchical model with 15 facets to enhance bandwidth, fidelity, and predictive power. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113, 117–143. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000096

39.

Strickhouser

J. E.

Zell

Krizan

(2017). Does personality predict health and well-being? A metasynthesis. Health Psychology, 36, 797–810. https://doi.org/10.1037/hea0000475

40.

Thielmann

Spadaro

Balliet

(2020). Personality and prosocial behavior: A theoretical framework and meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 146, 30–90. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000217

41.

Van Buuren

(2018). Flexible imputation of missing data (2nd ed.). CRC/Chapman & Hall.

42.

Van Buuren

Groothuis-Oudshoorn

(2011). mice: Multivariate imputation by chained equations in R. Journal of Statistical Software, 45. https://www.jstatsoft.org/article/view/v045i03

43.

Viechtbauer

(2020). metafor: Meta-analysis package for R (2.4-0) [Computer software]. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=metafor

44.

Zacher

Rudolph

C. W.

(2021). Individual differences and changes in subjective wellbeing during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. American Psychologist, 76, 50–62. http://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000702

45.

Zajenkowski

Jonason

P. K.

Leniarska

Kozakiewicz

(2020). Who complies with the restrictions to reduce the spread of COVID-19? Personality and perceptions of the COVID-19 situation. Personality and Individual Differences, 166, 110199. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.110199

46.

Zettler

Thielmann

Hilbig

B. E.

Moshagen

(2020). The nomological net of the HEXACO model of personality: A large-scale meta-analytic investigation. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15, 723–760. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691619895036

47.

Zirenko

Kornilova

Quiqi

Izmailova

(2021). Personality regulation of decisions on physical distancing: Cross-cultural comparison (Russia, Azerbaijan, China). Personality and Individual Differences, 170, 110418. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.110418

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.50 MB