Adaptive and maladaptive behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic: The roles of Dark Triad traits, collective narcissism, and health beliefs

Abstract

In a nationally representative sample from Poland ( N = 755), we examined the relationships between the Dark Triad traits (i.e., psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism) and collective narcissism (i.e., agentic and communal) on the one hand, and behaviors related to the COVID-19 pandemic at (1) the zero-order level, at (2) the latent variance level, and (3) indirectly through health beliefs about the virus (i.e., the health belief model) on the other. We focused on preventive and hoarding behaviors as common reactions toward the pandemic. Participants characterized by the Dark Triad traits engaged less in prevention and more in hoarding, whereas those characterized by collective narcissism engaged in more hoarding only. Coronavirus-related health beliefs mediated patterns of prevention (fully) and hoarding (partially) in the latent Dark Triad (Dark Core) and collective narcissism. However, specific beliefs worked in opposite directions, resulting in a weak indirect effect for prevention and a null indirect effect for hoarding. The results point to the utility of health beliefs in predicting behaviors during the pandemic, explaining (at least in part) problematic behaviors associated with the dark personalities (i.e., Dark Triad, collective narcissism).

Dual Evolutionary Foundations of Political Ideology Predict Divergent Responses to COVID-19

“…Economic progressivism was associated with self-reported physical distancing while economic conservatism was associated with self-reported stockpiling. Our data do not allow us to conclusively determine the motivation behind these behaviours, but prior work has shown that both behaviours are related to empathy 65,66 or a lack thereof (e.g., the Dark Triad traits) 84,85 . We also found that both economic progressivism and social conservatism independently predicted self-reported hand washing/sanitising.…”

Psychological entitlement predicts noncompliance with the health guidelines of the COVID-19 pandemic

“…This research adds to a growing body of work on how personality and individual differences predict compliance with health guidelines and other attitudes and behaviors during the pandemic (e.g., Aschwanden et al, 2020 ; Blagov, 2020 ; Nowak et al, 2020 ; Zajenkowski et al, 2020 ). 5 We studied entitlement in this paper because past research had identified a link between entitlement and ignoring instructions ( Zitek & Jordan, 2019 ), and because people have been quick to label those who are not following the guidelines as “entitled” (e.g., Weekman, 2020).…”

“… 5 Other research has identified a correlation between narcissism and noncompliance with pandemic health guidelines ( Nowak et al, 2020 ; Zajenkowski et al, 2020 ). Entitlement is one component of narcissism, but the other papers did not report correlations for the entitlement facet in particular.…”

Psychological underpinnings of pandemic denial - patterns of disagreement with scientific experts in the German public during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Conspiracy beliefs can serve psychological needs for certainty, security, and a positive self-image (Douglas et al, 2017), which is why, more recently, researchers have theorized conspiratorial thinking as a generalized political attitude intrinsically related to the sociopolitical world (Imhoff & Bruder, 2014;Imhoff & Lamberty, 2018;Sutton & Douglas, 2020). For example, there is initial evidence that collective narcissism (i.e., the inflated belief in the greatness of one's ingroup, De Zavala et al, 2009) predicts the belief and dissemination of conspiracy theories about COVID-19 (Nowak et al, 2020;Sternisko et al, 2020;Żemojtel-Piotrowska et al, 2020). Sternisko et al (2020) interpret their finding in ways that people high in collective narcissism are drawn to conspiratorial thinking because the Corona pandemic poses a threat to their social or political identity.…”