Aversive personality and COVID-19: A first review and meta-analysis

Abstract

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has strongly affected individuals and societies worldwide. In this review and meta-analysis, we investigated how aversive personality traits—i.e., relatively stable antisocial personality characteristics—related to how individuals perceived, evaluated, and responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. Across 34 studies with overall 26,780 participants, we found that people with higher scores in aversive personality traits were less likely to perceive guidelines and restrictions to curb the spread of the virus as protective (p̂ = -.11), to engage in health behaviors related to COVID-19 (p̂ = -.16), and to engage in non-health related prosocial behavior related to COVID-19 (p̂ = -.14). We found no consistent relation between aversive personality and negative affect regarding the pandemic. The results thus indicate the importance of aversive personality traits in understanding individual differences with regard to COVID-19.

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“…A recent example of the association between antisocial personality and rule violations comes from research reporting that individuals with antisocial traits (e.g., low in empathy and high in callousness, deceitfulness, and risk taking) are less compliant with containment measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19, which bears consequences on the pandemic spread and thus on society (Miguel et al, 2021 ). Similar results were found on people with aversive personality (Ścigała et al, 2021 ) . Moreover, individuals with APD are affected by deficits in emotional processing, such as recognizing facial expressions (Igoumenou et al, 2017 ; Marsh & Blair, 2008 ; Yoder et al, 2015 ) and in understanding other people’s social inputs, which are essential for normal socialization.…”

Age Differences in COVID-19 Preventive Behavior

“…Other major variables and their interactions may have been missing, especially in the case of social gatherings. This may include emotions, social norms, personality traits (i.e., extraversion vs. introversion) or social pressure (i.e., the expectation of significant others to attend social gatherings; Ścigała et al, 2020; Zettler et al, 2020). Additionally, the effectiveness of making a policy mandatory may vary for the two behaviors.…”

Perceptions of Macro- and Micro-Level Factors Predict COVID-19 Self-Reported Health and Safety Guidelines Adherence

“…Finally, two recent research reviews illuminate the role personality can play in Covid-19 safety protocol adherence: Across several studies examining compliance concerning the personality factors across personality models, extraversion was related to a reluctance to socially isolate, while conscientiousness was related to increased compliance with safety guidelines (Bacon et al, 2021). In a separate review of 24 studies involving nearly 20,000 participants, people with aversive personality traits (such as high Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, sadism, and low honesty-humility and social-value orientation) were less likely to view guidelines as protective and less likely to engage in health safety behavior (Ścigała et al, 2021).…”