Research Feed

This study suggests that individuals lower in agreeableness are more likely to resist or fail to comply with behavioral health mandates, such as those issued during public health crises. The findings indicate that tailoring health communication strategies to personality differences could improve compliance. More broadly, the results demonstrate the value of applying established psychological theories to understand and address behavior in real-world emergency contexts.

Based on representative data from Ireland and the United Kingdom, this study found that approximately 31-35% of the population displayed COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy or resistance. While these groups varied in sociodemographic backgrounds, they shared consistent psychological profiles across both nations. Notably, vaccine-resistant individuals were significantly less likely to use traditional or authoritative information sources and reported high levels of mistrust in those sources. These findings suggest that public health messaging must account for specific media consumption habits and deep-seated institutional skepticism when addressing hesitant populations.

Applying a Lewinian interactionist framework, this study examined how both government policy and personality traits influenced sheltering-in-place behavior across 54 countries. Researchers found that while strict government policies effectively increased compliance, individual personality traits remained significant predictors of behavior. Specifically, high levels of Openness, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism were linked to staying home, while Extraversion was associated with lower compliance. Notably, the influence of Openness and Neuroticism weakened as government restrictions became more stringent, suggesting that while personality drives behavior in flexible environments, strong external policies can partially override these internal tendencies.