Big-5 Personality Traits and their Dynamic and Conditional Effects on COVID-19 Attitudes and Behaviours

Much has been learned about who tends to follow public health advice during the COVID-19 pandemic. But there remains important questions about how personality can shape risk perceptions, willingness to engage in protective behaviours, and policy preferences. We use a survey of over 40,000 Canadian adults, fielded between November 2020 and July 2021, to evaluate the associations between Big-5 personality traits and COVID-19 beliefs and behaviours, the stability of these associations as pandemic conditions changed, and the how these traits moderate the effects of left-right ideology and expert trust on these attitudes and behaviours. We find moderate associations between risk perceptions and negative emotionality and agreeableness, and, as well as between each of the Big-5 traits and our respondents’ willingness to take protective behaviours and support government restrictions. These associations are mostly stable over time for protective behaviour, with instability particularly pronounced for lockdown support where agreeableness and conscientiousness diminishing in importance as pandemic conditions improved. We also show that negative emotionality, conscientiousness, and agreeableness reduce differences between the political left and right and between those who do and do not trust experts, while extraversion intensifies these divides. Our work calls for greater attention to how the correlates of COVID-19 attitudes and behaviours may change with an evolving pandemic.