New research from Brazil has found that people who are unconcerned
with adhering to measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 tend to
display higher levels of traits associated with antisocial personality
disorder, also known as sociopathy. The findings have been published in
the journal Personality and Individual Differences.
On
March 11th, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak
of the novel coronavirus SARS‐CoV‐2 to be a global pandemic. Governments
around the world urged people to follow preventive health measures such
as frequent hand washing and physical distancing.
“It is
noticeable that compliance with containment measures varies greatly
between people,” said the authors of the new study. “This is at least
partially connected with psychological factors such as personality
traits.”“To our knowledge, this is the first study focused on COVID-19
compliance with the containment measures and antisocial traits to be
conducted in a large Latin American sample using a repeated
cross-sectional design.”
In the online study, 1,578 Brazilian
adults completed a measure of maladaptive personality traits between May
21 and June 29, 2020. They also completed assessments of empathy and
compliance with COVID-19 containment measures.
The researchers
found that those who scored higher on measures of callousness,
deceitfulness, hostility, impulsivity, manipulativeness, and risk-taking
tended to be less compliant with COVID-19 containment measures, such as
socially distancing, washing hands frequently, and wearing a facemask
in public. Participants with greater empathy, on the other hand, tended
to be more compliant with COVID-19 containment measures.
“Our
findings indicated that antisocial traits, especially lower levels of
empathy and higher levels of Callousness and Risk-taking, are directly
associated with compliance with containment measures. These traits
explain, at least partially, the reason why people continue not adhering
to the containment measures even with the increasing numbers of cases
and deaths,” the researchers said.“Exposing oneself and others to risk, even when it can be avoided, is
a typical trait for people with antisocial tendencies, and with low
levels of empathy.”
The new findings are in line with previous research conducted in the United States and Poland,
which also found that antisocial personality traits were associated
with ignoring preventative measures meant to halt the spread of
COVID-19.
“Our findings can be useful for public health policies,
e.g., through screenings that demonstrate an elevation in these traits,
interventions can be carried out aiming at greater awareness and
consequent compliance with containment measures. We suggest that further
studies be carried out investigating the interaction of these traits
with other variables,” said the authors of the new research.
The study, “Compliance with containment measures to the COVID-19 pandemic over time: Do antisocial traits matter?“, was authored by Fabiano Koich Miguel, Gisele Magarotto Machado, Giselle Pianowski, and Lucasde Francisco Carvalho.
(Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay)
No comments:
Post a Comment