Personality differences and COVID-19: are extroversion and conscientiousness personality traits associated with engagement with containment measures?

Introduction: In December 2019, an outbreak of the novel coronavirus, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) probably occurred in Wuhan, China. By March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) had declared a pandemic. Containment measures such as social distancing and hand hygiene were recommended. In this study, we start from the hypothesis that engaging with containment measures in a pandemic situation should be more comfortable for some people than for other people. Thus, individual differences should be associated with engagement with containment measures. Objective: To investigate to what extent two personality traits, extroversion and conscientiousness, are associated with engagement with two containment measures (social distancing and handwashing). Methods: The sample consisted of 715 Brazilian adults aged 18-78 years, who answered the Big Five Inventory 2 Short (BFI-2-S) and factors from the Dimensional Clinical Personality Inventory 2 (IDCP-2). Results: Higher scores for extroversion were associated with lower means for social distancing (p < 0.001) and higher scores for conscientiousness were associated with higher means for social distancing and handwashing (p < 0.05). Conclusion: The findings indicate the importance of acknowledging extroversion and conscientiousness traits as relevant to people’s engagement with the measures recommended for COVID-19

confirmed cases of COVID 19 had been announced and almost 10,000 deaths had been registered, mostly in Italy and China. Outside of these, 176 countries had reported more than 130,000 cases. Unfortunately, as we write this paper, the COVID-19 emergency is evolving rapidly. [1][2][3] Similar to other coronaviruses (e.g., MERS-COV), 4 the negative impact of COVID-19 and its consequences are vast, including negative outcomes in mental health, with increased depressive and anxiety symptoms, stress disorders, insomnia, anger, and fear. [5][6][7][8][9][10] Furthermore, pandemics are known to provoke social disruptions. 1,2 Several publications warned of the need for containment measures, [11][12][13][14][15] mostly focusing on social distancing (defined as a set of actions aimed to stop or slow down the spread of a contagious disease, such as maintaining distance from other people and avoiding leaving the home) 16  and washing hands, and to perceive the impacts of COVID-19 as highly negative (e.g., high mortality and negative influence on social order and economics). We can therefore observe some initial results indicating that people are inclined to adhere to containment measures in extreme situations. A necessary further step is to investigate the role of individual differences in the propensity to adhere to containment measures, which is the scope of our study.
In this study, we start from the assumption that engaging with containment measures in a pandemic situation should be easier for some people than others.
Individual differences are expected to be associated with the disposition to engage in these measures. We aimed to investigate associations between two personality traits, extroversion and conscientiousness, and engagement with two containment measures (social distancing and handwashing). Therefore, we used the Five-Factor Model (FFM) as the framework for personality traits, since it is the model closest to the scientific consensus. 20 The FFM proposes that personality is best described in five broad traits: extroversion (or extraversion), agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness. A personality trait is a stable psychological characteristic that contributes to determining how people experience the world as well as to the impact of these experiences. 21 Our focus is on the extroversion trait, since people who score high for this trait are outgoing and generally prone to closeness and social contact; and on conscientiousness, since people who score high for this trait are organized, meticulous, and tend to respect norms and social rules.
We hypothesize that extroverted people are less likely to engage with the COVID-19 pandemic containment measures than highly conscientious people.

Methods
This is a cross-sectional study, nested within a larger mental health project in Brazil, with research ethics committee approval (CAAE: 09112419.7.0000.5514).
All participants signed an informed consent form before participating.

Participants
The study sample consisted of 715 Brazilian adults, recruited by convenience between March 18 and 19 of 2020. The sole eligibility criterion was age ≥ 18 years.

Questionnaire on COVID-19-related behavior
We developed a questionnaire to measure general information and behavior-related to the COVID-19 pandemic situation. Focusing on our objective, we selected two variables associated with containment measures, specifically, social distancing and handwashing behaviors. We presented participants with "yes or no" response format questions, "Do you think it is necessary to avoid approaching people as much as possible until the coronavirus situation is controlled?" and "Do you think it is necessary to wash your hands and/or use alcohol gel as many times a day as possible until the coronavirus situation is controlled?".

Big Five Inventory-2 Short (BFI-2-S) 22
The BFI-2-S is a self-report measure of personality

Dimensional Clinical Personality Inventory 2 (IDCP-2) 24
The IDCP-2 was developed in Brazil and is a selfreport measure that assesses pathological traits, i.e., extreme maladaptive variants of personality traits.  Table 1 reports descriptive statistics for basic sociodemographic data and specific information related to COVID-19. We see a trend towards lower extroversion scores in the social distance group (p < 0.001), indicating that people who are more concerned with social distance tend to be less extroverted. We also observe a trend to lower conscientiousness scores for the groups that considered neither of the containment measures were essential in the current pandemic situation (p = 0.011).

Results
When compared to extroversion, we observe higher means for conscientiousness in the groups of people who reported adhering to both or one of the containment   The methodological limitations of our study must be acknowledged. First, this is a cross-sectional study with a restricted convenience sample, and potential uncontrolled confounding variables, which introduce biases to the findings. Second, we only administered self-report scales and did not employ a multimethod approach. Third, we focused on two containment measures and not on all possible measures recommended in the present pandemic situation.
We hope our findings can contribute to dealing with this grueling time for humanity. Many efforts to minimize the damage of the COVID-19 pandemic are underway.
We can only agree with the closing words of Wang et al. 3 : "Every effort should be given to understand and control the disease, and the time to act is now."

Disclosure
No conflicts of interest declared concerning the publication of this article.