The Health Behavior Model of Personality in the Context of a Public Health Crisis

Objectives: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended behavioral measures to slow the spread of COVID-19, such as social distancing and wearing masks. While many individuals comply with these recommendations, compliance has been far from universal. Identifying predictors of compliance is crucial for improving health-behavior messaging and thereby reducing disease spread and fatalities.Method: Here, we report a pre-registered longitudinal study which investigated personality predictors of compliance with CDC recommendations in diverse U.S. adults across five waves from March through August, 2020 (N=596) and cross-sectionally in August, 2020 (N=405). Results: Agreeableness—characterized by compassion—was a strong predictor of compliance, above and beyond other traits and demographic predictors. The effect of agreeableness was robust across two diverse samples, three sets of sensitivity analyses, and was not moderated by time or demographic variables. Conclusions: Individuals who are less agreeable are at high-risk for non-compliance with behavioral mandates, suggesting that health messaging can be meaningfully improved with approaches that address these individuals in particular. Indeed, current health-behavior messaging may be especially misaligned with these individuals, as it has largely focused on appeals to agreeableness (e.g., compassion) by emphasizing the community-protective benefits of slowing the spread of COVID-19. Combining current health-behavior messaging with alternative appeals that are more likely to reach less agreeable individuals may be particularly effective. These findings highlight the strong theoretical and practical utility of testing long-standing psychological theories using rigorous methods during real-world crises.