Big Five, Dark Triad, and Face Masks
The Role of Personality in Reducing the Spread of COVID-19
Abstract
Abstract: Face masks are an effective method to reduce the spread of COVID-19, but many people are reluctant to wear them. Recent authors have called for studies of personality to determine which people may have particularly negative face mask perceptions and reduced face mask wearing. In the current article, we assess the relation of the Big Five and Dark Triad with face mask perceptions and wearing. We apply a four-wave longitudinal research design collected via MTurk (n = 209, Mage = 36.97 years, 50% female, 85% American), and we use the eight-dimension Face Mask Perceptions Scale to test mediating mechanisms between personality and behavior. When tested together, conscientiousness, extraversion, and neuroticism did not have notable relations with perceptions or wearing; openness and the Dark Triad had significant relations with face mask perceptions, and agreeableness had significant indirect effects on face mask wearing via perceptions. These results indicate that personality does relate to face mask perceptions and behaviors. We call on future research to conduct facet-level studies of personality with face mask perceptions and behaviors to ascertain the cause of these observed relations, further identify the importance of specific face mask perceptions, and integrate personality into models of health behaviors.
References
2020). Psychological and behavioural responses to coronavirus disease 2019: The role of personality. European Journal of Personality, 35(1), 51–66.
(2020). The role of personality in the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of students in Germany during the first weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. PLoS One, 15(11), Article
(e0242904 .2022). Measuring the dark core of personality in German: Psychometric properties, measurement invariance, predictive validity, and self-other agreement. Journal of Personality Assessment, 104(5), 660–673.
(2020). Voluntary adoption of social welfare-enhancing behavior: Mask-wearing in Spain during the COVID-19 outbreak. PLoS One, 15(12), Article
(e0242764 .2019). Noncompliant responding: Comparing exclusion criteria in MTurk personality research to improve data quality. Personality and Individual Differences, 143, 84–89.
(2004). Conscientiousness and health-related behaviors: A meta-analysis of the leading behavioral contributors to mortality. Psychological Bulletin, 130(6), 887–919.
(2020). Global access to handwashing: Implications for COVID-19 control in low-income countries. Environmental Health Perspectives, 128(5), Article
(057005 .2021). Prosociality predicts health behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Public Economics, 195, Article
(104367 .2021). Coronavirus disease (COVID-19): A primer for emergency physicians. The American Journal of Emergency Medicine, 44, 220–229.
(2020). The role of community-wide wearing of face mask for control of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic due to SARS-CoV-2. Journal of Infection, 81(1), 107–114.
(2001). Conscientiousness and the theory of planned behavior: Toward a more complete model of the antecedents of intentions and behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27(11), 1547–1561.
(2020). Perceived vulnerability to disease and attitudes towards public health measures: COVID-19 in Flanders, Belgium. Personality and Individual Differences, 166, Article
(110220 .2020). Differences in adherence to COVID-19 pandemic containment measures: Psychopathy traits, empathy, and sex. Trends in Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, 42(4), 389–392.
(2006). The Mini-IPIP scales: Tiny-yet-effective measures of the Big Five factors of personality. Psychological Assessment, 18, 192–203.
(2022). A sociocultural norm perspective on Big Five prediction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 122(3), 554–575.
(2020). To mask or not to mask: Modeling the potential for face mask use by the general public to curtail the COVID-19 pandemic. Infectious Disease Modelling, 5, 293–308.
(2007). Required sample size to detect the mediated effect. Psychological Science, 18(3), 233–239.
(1998). Relations between affect and personality: Support for the affect-level and affective-reactivity views. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 24(3), 279–288.
(2009). Mindfulness, Big Five personality, and affect: A meta-analysis. Personality and Individual Differences, 47(8), 805–811.
(2019). Multivariate data analysis. Cengage Learning.
(2020). Assessing measurement model quality in PLS-SEM using confirmatory composite analysis. Journal of Business Research, 109, 101–110.
(2017). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach. Guilford Press.
(2021). Theoretical and empirical dissociations between the dark factor of personality and low honesty-humility. Journal of Research in Personality, 95, Article
(104154 .2016). A review of exploratory factor analysis decisions and overview of current practices: What we are doing and how can we improve? International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 32(1), 51–62.
(2020). Understanding face mask use to prevent coronavirus and other illnesses: Development of a multidimensional Face Mask Perceptions Scale. British Journal of Health Psychology, 25(4), 912–924.
(2022). Assessing the shared facets of honesty-humility and Machiavellianism: Implications for a Common Conceptual Core. Journal of Individual Differences, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1027/1614-0001/a000384
(2020). The discriminant validity of Honesty-Humility: A meta-analysis of the HEXACO, Big Five, and Dark Triad. Journal of Research in Personality, 87, Article
(103982 .2019). Using MTurk to distribute a survey or experiment: Methodological considerations. Journal of Information Systems, 33(1), 43–65.
(2013). Walking the thin line between efficiency and accuracy: Validity and structural properties of the Dirty Dozen. Personality and Individual Differences, 55(1), 76–81.
(2010). The dirty dozen: A concise measure of the dark triad. Psychological Assessment, 22(2), 420–423.
(2013). The core of darkness: Uncovering the heart of the Dark Triad. European Journal of Personality, 27(6), 521–531.
(2014). Introducing the Short Dark Triad (SD3): A brief measure of dark personality traits. Assessment, 21(1), 28–41.
(1971). Personality and consumer behavior: A review. Journal of marketing Research, 8(4), 409–418.
(2020). Scientific and ethical basis for social-distancing interventions against COVID-19. The Lancet, 20(6), 631–633.
(2019). Determining the number of factors using parallel analysis and its recent variants. Psychological Methods, 24(4), 452–467.
(2020). COVID‐19: Face masks and human‐to‐human transmission. Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses, 14(4), 472–473.
(2021). Dark side of health-predicting health behaviors and diseases with the Dark Triad traits. Journal of Public Health, 29, 275–284.
(1987). Validation of the five-factor model of personality across instruments and observers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(1), 81–90.
(2020).
(Situational strength theory . In J. F. RauthmannR. ShermanD. C. FunderEds., The Oxford handbook of psychological situations (pp. 79–95). Oxford University Press.2020). Compliance with containment measures to the COVID-19 pandemic over time: Do antisocial traits matter? Personality and Individual Differences, 168, Article
(110346 .2018). The dark core of personality. Psychological Review, 125(5), 656–688. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000111
(2019). Personality traits and theory of planned behavior comparison of entrepreneurial intentions between an emerging economy and a developing country. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, 25(3), 554–580. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEBR-05-2018-0336
(2022). Coronavirus map: Tracking the global outbreak. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/world/coronavirus-maps.html
. (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, Article
(110232 .2020a). Big 5 Personality Traits. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/big-5-personality-traits
. (2020b). Beware of the Malevolent Dark Triad. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/toxic-relationships/201812/beware-the-malevolent-dark-triad
. (2022). Does personality predict responses to the COVID-19 crisis? Evidence from a prospective large-scale study. European Journal of Personality, 36(1), 47–60.
(2004). Personality and social cognitive influences on exercise behavior: Adding the activity trait to the theory of planned behavior. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 5(3), 243–254.
(2020). Beyond a tandem analysis of SEM and PROCESS: Use of PLS-SEM for mediation analyses. International Journal of Market Research, 62(3), 288–299.
(2017). Determining power and sample size for simple and complex mediation models. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 8, 379–386.
(2020). Who’s listening? Predictors of concern about COVID-19 and preventative health behaviors. https://psyarxiv.com/c9rfg/download?format=pdf
(2020). Individual psychological responses to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: Different clusters and their relation to risk-reducing behavior. https://psyarxiv.com/k8unc/download?format=pdf
(2020). COVID‐19 and rationally layered social distancing. International Journal of Clinical Practice, 74(7), Article
(e13501 .2013). Longitudinal correlated changes in conscientiousness, preventative health‐related behaviors, and self‐perceived physical health. Journal of Personality, 81(4), 417–427.
(2020). Fewer than four in 10 cover face on UK public transport – Guardian survey. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/04/fewer-than-four-in-10-people-in-uk-wear-a-face-covering-guardian-survey
(2013).
(Trait activation theory . In N. ChristiansenR. TettEds., Handbook of personality at work (pp. 71–100). Taylor & Francis.2018). Exploratory factor analysis: A guide to best practice. Journal of Black Psychology, 44(3), 219–246.
(2020). Personality predicts compliance with COVID-19 preventive behaviors recommended by the US centers for disease control and prevention. https://psyarxiv.com/mu3ja/download?format=pdf
(2022). The role of personality in COVID-19-related perceptions, evaluations, and behaviors: Findings across five samples, nine traits, and 17 criteria. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 13(1), 299–310.
(2020). The nomological net of the HEXACO model of personality: A large-scale meta-analytic investigation. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15(3), 723–760.
(2020). Conscientiousness and smartphone recycling intention: The moderating effect of risk perception. Waste Management, 101, 116–125.
(2014). Monte Carlo based statistical power analysis for mediation models: Methods and software. Behavior Research Methods, 46(4), 1184–1198.
(2020). From data to causes II: Comparing approaches to panel data analysis. Organizational Research Methods, 23(4), 688–716.
(