“Sometimes you find yourself in the middle of chaos, and sometimes in the middle of chaos, you find yourself.”
Boonaa Mohammed
A study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science examined how personality traits influence social mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic across various countries. This study was carried out by a team of researchers, led by Dr. Ho Fai Chan, a post-doc fellow at Queensland University of Technology.
From the moment COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, countries around the world have been tirelessly working to combat the virus. While some countries have been successful in reducing their number of cases, others haven’t fared as well.
Since this deadly coronavirus can be easily transmitted upon contact with an infected person, one of the best ways to reduce the spread of this virus is for people to stay home. Yet, some regions have struggled to get their citizens to comply.
This led the researchers to wonder if personality traits may help explain why and how often individuals leave their home. To learn more about this, they designed a study to examine the association between personality traits and social mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Chan and his team of researchers began their first experiment by examining the COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports. These reports are designed to track changes in visits to places like grocery stores, transit stations and parks.
The data were collected from anonymous Google users who’ve turned on their location history settings. The researchers examined the data from the mobility reports between February 15th to May 5th, 2020 and compared it to the data from January 3rd to February 6th, 2020.
Next, they used a previous study to determine the Big Five personality traits at the country level. These traits include openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.
The researchers also made note of the government responses (e.g. closure of schools, ban on public gatherings) from each country and region involved in the study.
Interestingly, they found that when movement restrictions are put in place, regions high in extraversion and openness are more likely to increase mobility related to domestic travel and public events.
Unsurprisingly, they also found that regions that are higher in agreeableness are more likely to comply with movement restrictions, even when these restrictions are loose.
In a follow-up experiment, the researchers examined personality and mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic at an individual level. The participants in this experiment were given surveys such as the 10-item personality inventory to assess their levels of the Big Five personality traits previously mentioned.
Participants were also asked to provide information on when they’ve left home recently, and why. The reasons for why each participant left the house were divided into three categories: psychological needs (e.g. getting tired of being inside the house), basic necessities (e.g. procuring food, going to work), and medical necessities (e.g. going to the hospital).
The results revealed that individuals higher in extraversion were less likely to report staying home in the previous week. Those higher in openness and agreeableness were more likely to stay home in the previous week.
Participants lower in openness reported being less likely to leave the house in the next five days. Gender and age also played a role in these results. Older and younger participants (compared to middle-aged participants) were more likely to report staying home and less likely to leave home in the near future.
Female participants (compared to male participants) were also more likely to have stayed home previously and continue to stay home in the future. The researchers also found that male participants who rated themselves healthier were also more likely to leave the house due to psychological needs.
In general, the researchers found significant associations between certain personality traits and social mobility. Knowing these trends may help the government’s efforts to release targeted and effective measures to limit the transmission of COVID-19.