Masquerade of Polish Society—Psychological Determinants of COVID-19 Precautionary Behaviors

Abstract

The risk of contracting COVID-19 was a very specific situation of uncertainty and ambi-guity, and of course, cognitively interesting for psychologists studying the determinants of behaviors of different personality types. In this study, we set our sights on trying to find a correlation between adherence to wearing masks and receiving vaccinations and having certain character traits that we thought might influence preventive behavior or not. We focused on the Dark Triad—psychopathy, Machiavellianism and narcissism—as well as social approval and the need for cognition closure, as these traits have previously been linked to heightened conspiracy mentalities. We recruited 159 subjects in the experiment, including 53 male and 106 female participants over the age of 18 to take part in an online survey investigating personality and COVID-19 information. The results confirmed our hypothesis that age, empathy, the need for social approval and other psychological traits are the factors that differentiates people who wear face masks from those who do not. However, it seems impossible to define one set of features that would predispose people to not wear face masks. In our study, the importance of psychological features differed depending on the category of public places. We discuss possible implications of these findings and provide direction for future research.