It is not surprising that individuals react differently to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The latest research suggests key variations in how COVID-19 responded to people with "dark" personality traits.
People with dark personality traits belong to the Dark Tetrad. These entities are classified as sadists, narcissists, psychopaths, and sociopaths in colloquial terminology.
Yet, that does not imply you have a dark personality disorder whether you have any of its characteristics. However, these characteristics are generally correlated with adverse social outcomes.
And a small scientific analysis shows that specific personality characteristics can help forecast how people, including the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, respond to a global crisis.
How Did The Experts Do It?
Researchers at the University of Mississippi found slight but clearly discernible variations related to certain personality features after monitoring 402 Americans aged 18 to 78.
The research authors observed that cognitive and emotional reactions to the early pandemic periods in the United States were expected differently by dark personalities.
During the coronavirus pandemic, experts invited the participants to complete an online questionnaire describing their opinions, emotions, and actions.
Experts rated their dark personality characteristics using the Dirty Dozen metric and the Assessment of Sadistic Personality examination.
Emotionally, those with darker personality characteristics suffered from the resulting societal turmoil that came with the pandemic.
Nevertheless, the analysis showed that in reaction to COVID-19, those who rated themselves as possessing sadistic traits generally recorded enormously beneficial outcomes.
Study authors also found out that these individuals can gain gratification from events commonly considered to hurt society.
Although these variations are statistically significant, they are slight, the discomfort was at pains to point out.
Self-reporting and binary 'yes' or 'no' responses were used in this study, suggesting further analysis is needed to draw a categorical inference.
They further illustrate how people interested in the research were not clinical narcissists or sadists, but just shared that they have any of those attributes.
However, the research is known as providing significant insights into how personality ranges respond to societal upheaval. In reaction to the coronavirus pandemic, the researchers have investigated how personality groups formed their behavior.
None of the dark personality characteristics were predictors of hoarding behaviour, the findings revealed.
Although people with narcissistic or psychopathic characteristics, such as systematic grooming, were less inclined to indulge in daily hygienic conduct. The higher these individuals scored in terms of narcissism and psychopathy, the less they associated with their clean behavior.
Although more Machiavellian characters were more afraid of transmitting coronavirus with darker features, others with narcissistic attributes obviously engaged in activities that benefited those afflicted by the pandemic.
How This Study Could Affect Others
Although this might sound counter-intuitive, the researchers conclude that this is confirmed by previous studies that have shown that narcissists may engage in prosocial activities to gain acceptance from others.
Two older research released in July and November last year confirmed some of the dark personality characteristics could determine how likely people were to obey public health advice, such as social distancing and wearing a mask.
And on a hopeful note, most of the participants said they were also engaged in social distancing, regular hand washing, restricting travel and in-person meetings.
The researchers say this disparity could be because the pandemic is a 'solid case' in which the role of personality in forecasting people's actions is overpowered by situational signs.
The current study's findings, according to the experts, reflect a significant contribution to our knowledge of how dark personality attributes function in unpredictable times.
Experts released their study in the Personal and Individual Differences website.
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