Universität zu Köln

Kaspar, Kai ORCID: 0000-0002-5092-6798 and Nordmeyer, Laura (2022). Personality and Motivation to Comply With COVID-19 Protective Measures in Germany. Front. Psychol., 13. LAUSANNE: FRONTIERS MEDIA SA. ISSN 1664-1078

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Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic strains the healthcare systems, economy, education, and social life. Governments took several protective measures and formulated behavioral guidelines to prevent individual diseases and the collapse of healthcare systems. However, individual differences in the extent of compliance with the measures are apparent. To shed more light on this issue, the present correlational study examined the joint relation of several personal characteristics to people's motivation to comply with seven protective measures. Personal characteristics included age, gender, risk perception, the Big Five, the Dark Triad, conspiracy mentality, perceived locus of control, and general affect. Protective measures included social distancing, hygiene rules, wearing face masks, using a contact-tracing app, sharing one's infection status via the app, reducing physical contacts, and vaccinations. The study ran from 10 November 2020 to 29 December 2020. Based on a sample of 1,007 German-speaking participants, bivariate correlations and multiple regression analyses showed that personal characteristics are significantly linked to the motivation to comply with these measures. However, general affect, control beliefs, and basic personality traits play only a minor role. Age and gender showed some significant associations with protective measures. In contrast, protection motivation factors, in terms of perceived severity of and vulnerability to infection, and conspiracy mentality appear to be the major correlates of adopting protective behavior. The absolute motivation to comply with the measures also shows that hygiene rules and wearing face masks receive a higher average agreement than more personally intrusive measures such as physical contact restrictions and vaccinations. These results highlight that factors that are relevant to some measures may be irrelevant to other measures. Differences in people's personal characteristics should be considered in the design and communication of measures to support social acceptance and effectiveness. In this context, cognitive variables, which can be addressed by communication and education directly, seem to be more important than general affect and relatively time-invariant personality traits.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code Kaspar, Kai kkaspar@uni-koeln.de orcid.org/0000-0002-5092-6798 UNSPECIFIED Nordmeyer, Laura UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-659654
DOI:	10.3389/fpsyg.2022.893881
Journal or Publication Title:	Front. Psychol.
Volume:	13
Date:	2022
Publisher:	FRONTIERS MEDIA SA
Place of Publication:	LAUSANNE
ISSN:	1664-1078
Language:	English
Faculty:	Faculty of Human Sciences
Divisions:	Weitere Institute, Arbeits- und Forschungsgruppen > Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für empirische LehrerInnen- und Unterrichtsforschung (IZeF)
Subjects:	Psychology Medical sciences Medicine
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Keywords Language DARK TRIAD; GENDER-DIFFERENCES; HEALTH BEHAVIORS; NEGATIVE AFFECT; OUTCOMES; TRAIT; CONSCIENTIOUSNESS; METAANALYSIS; VALIDATION; REGRESSION Multiple languages Psychology, Multidisciplinary Multiple languages
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/65965