ABSTRACT
The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has strongly affected individuals and societies worldwide. In this review and meta-analysis, we investigated how aversive personality traits - that is, relatively stable antisocial personality characteristics - related to how individuals perceived, evaluated, and responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. Across 34 studies with overall 26,780 participants, we found that people with higher scores in aversive personality traits were less likely to perceive guidelines and restrictions to curb the spread of the virus as protective ((p)over dot = -.11), to engage in health behaviors related to COVID-19 ((p)over dot = -.16), and to engage in non-health-related prosocial behavior related to COVID-19 ((p)over dot = -.14). We found no consistent relation between aversive personality and negative effect regarding the pandemic. The results thus indicate the importance of aversive personality traits in understanding individual differences with regard to COVID-19.
ABSTRACT
Global challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic or the impending climate change require each and every one of us to perform long-term self-restrictive behaviours, implying personal costs, for the sake of vulnerable others and future generations. We argue that empathy - conceptualised as other-oriented moral emotional process - can impact how we think, feel and act towards others in times of such disruptive global developments. Our research highlights how and under which circumstances empathy fosters solidarity with others in need. We review our findings which corroborate empathy's potential in directly changing health-relevant behaviour (such as hand hygiene behaviour or adherence to COVID-19 pre-emptive measures) and as well as pro-environmental actions, which serve to protect others' well-being through self-discipline and self-restriction. Furthermore, we also review and discuss research which indicates potential boundary conditions of empathy-induced prosocial responses to the plight of vulnerable individuals.