New Study Links Sociopathic Traits to Non-Compliance to COVID-19 Guidelines

The study collected data from 1,578 Brazilian adults who had to complete an online test about maladaptive personality traits.

In the online study, between May 21 and June 29, 2020, 1,578 Brazilian adults completed a measure of maladaptive personality traits. They also had to complete assessments of empathy and acceptance towards the novel coronavirus containment measures.

Their findings showed that participants who scored higher on measures of insensibility, impulsivity, duplicity, hostility, and manipulativeness were also the people who are less obedient with COVID-19 containment measures such as proper hand washing, wearing face masks in public places and social distancing.

At the same time, participants who scored higher for empathy tended to comply easier to the COVID-19 safety measures.

“Our findings indicated that antisocial traits, especially lower levels of empathy and higher levels of Callousness and Risk-taking, are directly associated with compliance with containment measures. These traits explain, at least partially, the reason why people continue not adhering to the containment measures even with the increasing numbers of cases and deaths,” the researchers said.

“Exposing oneself and others to risk, even when it can be avoided, is a typical trait for people with antisocial tendencies, and with low levels of empathy.”

However, this is not the first study made on this topic. previous studies made in the United States and Poland linked to antisocial personality traits had the same results. Therefore, sociopathy is associated with ignoring the containment measures taken to prevent the spread of the virus.

“Our findings can be useful for public health policies, e.g., through screenings that demonstrate an elevation in these traits, interventions can be carried out aiming at greater awareness and consequent compliance with containment measures. We suggest that further studies be carried out investigating the interaction of these traits with other variables,” explained the authors of the new research.

“The findings indicate the importance of acknowledging extroversion and conscientiousness traits as relevant to people’s engagement with the measures recommended for COVID-19 containment.”

The study, “Compliance with containment measures to the COVID-19 pandemic over time: Do antisocial traits matter?“, was made by Fabiano Koich Miguel, Gisele Magarotto Machado, Giselle Pianowski, and Lucasde Francisco Carvalho.