Abstract
A central feature of the Covid-19 pandemic is state differences. Some state Governors closed all but essential businesses, others did not. In some states, most of the population wore face coverings when in public; in other states, <50% wore face coverings. According to journalists, these differences were symptomatic of a politically polarized America. The Big 5 personality factors also cluster at the state level. For example, residents of Utah score high on Conscientiousness and low on Neuroticism, whereas residents of Massachusetts and Connecticut show the opposite pattern. In state-level regressions that controlled for partisan political allegiances, Conscientiousness was a significant (negative) predictor of the stringency of state Covid-19 restrictions, whereas Openness was a significant (positive) predictor of mask wearing. A number of the predictors were strongly correlated with each other. For example, the correlation coefficient linking Openness with the percentage of Democratic state legislators was r = 0.53. Commonality regression partitions the explained variance between the amount that is unique to each predictor and the amount that is shared among subsets of correlated predictors. This approach revealed that the common variance shared by Conscientiousness, Openness and partisan politics accounted for 34% of the state differences in Covid-19 policy and 35% of the state differences in mask wearing. The results reflect the importance of personality in how Americans have responded to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Highlights
In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the governors of California, New Mexico, and Maine mandated restaurants to stop serving patrons indoors, churches to close or greatly restrict attendance, and individuals to wear face coverings when in public
Psychologists and political scientists have shown that two of the Big 5 personality factors, Conscientiousness and Openness, reliably predict political ideology (e.g., Gerber et al, 2010) and cluster geographically in ways that fit the geographical and political clustering stressed in accounts of the U.S response to Covid 19 (Rentfrow et al, 2009)
States with populations that score high on Conscientiousness tend to vote for Republican presidential candidates, whereas states with populations that score high on Openness tend to vote for Democratic presidential candidates
Summary
In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the governors of California, New Mexico, and Maine mandated restaurants to stop serving patrons indoors, churches to close or greatly restrict attendance, and individuals to wear face coverings when in public. Psychologists and political scientists have shown that two of the Big 5 personality factors, Conscientiousness and Openness, reliably predict political ideology (e.g., Gerber et al, 2010) and cluster geographically in ways that fit the geographical and political clustering stressed in accounts of the U.S response to Covid 19 (Rentfrow et al, 2009). An article in The New Yorker on a small North Dakota town’s struggle to come to a consensus on mask wearing nicely captured the role of individual differences (Gawande, 2021) Those pushing for issuing a mask mandate checked one or more of the following boxes: worked in health care, had a professional degree, was a progressive Democrat, or grew up out of state. The debate was about how people led their lives as much as it was about health; it was deeply personal. (The labels for the personality factors are italicized to indicate that they identify patterns of responding on questionnaires and do not necessarily reflect ordinary word usage.)
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