Aversive Personality and COVID-19 A First Review and Meta-Analysis

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 - that is, 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 ((p)over dot = -.11), to engage in health behaviors related to COVID-19 ((p)over dot = -.16), and to engage in non-health-related prosocial behavior related to COVID-19 ((p)over dot = -.14). We found no consistent relation between aversive personality and negative effect regarding the pandemic. The results thus indicate the importance of aversive personality traits in understanding individual differences with regard to COVID-19.

Automated summary

Individuals with higher aversive personality traits were less likely to perceive COVID-19 guidelines and restrictions as protective, engage in health-related behaviors, and engage in non-health-related prosocial behaviors related to COVID-19. However, there was no consistent relationship between aversive personality traits and negative effects regarding the pandemic.