Strong Scripts, Weak Traits: A Longitudinal Test of Personality Coherence During COVID-19

The theory of personality coherence (TPC) posits that personality matters most when ‘scripts’---socially prescribed norms of conduct---are weak or changing. The COVID-19 pandemic offered a natural test of TPC, yet there have been no comprehensive and formal tests of the theory’s explanatory capacity in this context. We address this gap using nationally representative longitudinal data from Ukraine (2019–2021; N=1,409) and focusing on outcomes central to public health response---compliance with restrictions (attitudes) and vaccination (behavior). Contrary to TPC’s expectations, trait-outcome associations were small and inconsistent and did not change as the crisis unfolded. Concurrent traits did not reliably outperform pre-pandemic traits. While dispositions explained slightly more variance in compliance than exposure in set-wise comparisons, exposure was more predictive of vaccination intent, and neither explained vaccination uptake. The results are robust across multiple model specifications, MICE imputations, extensive bootstrapping, and latent-variable replications. Together, the findings sharpen TPC’s scope conditions: during prolonged, high-constraint crises, situational pressures overshadow rather than amplify individual differences.