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Personality and Its Partisan Political Correlates Predict U.S. State Differences in Covid-19 Policies and Mask Wearing Percentages

A central feature of the Covid-19 pandemic is state differences. Some state Governors closed all but essential businesses, others did not. In some states, most of the population wore face coverings when in public; in other states, <50% wore face coverings. According to journalists, these differen...

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Autor principal: Heyman, Gene M.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8502796/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34646213
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.729774
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author Heyman, Gene M.
author_facet Heyman, Gene M.
author_sort Heyman, Gene M.
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description A central feature of the Covid-19 pandemic is state differences. Some state Governors closed all but essential businesses, others did not. In some states, most of the population wore face coverings when in public; in other states, <50% wore face coverings. According to journalists, these differences were symptomatic of a politically polarized America. The Big 5 personality factors also cluster at the state level. For example, residents of Utah score high on Conscientiousness and low on Neuroticism, whereas residents of Massachusetts and Connecticut show the opposite pattern. In state-level regressions that controlled for partisan political allegiances, Conscientiousness was a significant (negative) predictor of the stringency of state Covid-19 restrictions, whereas Openness was a significant (positive) predictor of mask wearing. A number of the predictors were strongly correlated with each other. For example, the correlation coefficient linking Openness with the percentage of Democratic state legislators was r = 0.53. Commonality regression partitions the explained variance between the amount that is unique to each predictor and the amount that is shared among subsets of correlated predictors. This approach revealed that the common variance shared by Conscientiousness, Openness and partisan politics accounted for 34% of the state differences in Covid-19 policy and 35% of the state differences in mask wearing. The results reflect the importance of personality in how Americans have responded to the Covid-19 pandemic.
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spelling pubmed-85027962021-10-12 Personality and Its Partisan Political Correlates Predict U.S. State Differences in Covid-19 Policies and Mask Wearing Percentages Heyman, Gene M. Front Psychol Psychology A central feature of the Covid-19 pandemic is state differences. Some state Governors closed all but essential businesses, others did not. In some states, most of the population wore face coverings when in public; in other states, <50% wore face coverings. According to journalists, these differences were symptomatic of a politically polarized America. The Big 5 personality factors also cluster at the state level. For example, residents of Utah score high on Conscientiousness and low on Neuroticism, whereas residents of Massachusetts and Connecticut show the opposite pattern. In state-level regressions that controlled for partisan political allegiances, Conscientiousness was a significant (negative) predictor of the stringency of state Covid-19 restrictions, whereas Openness was a significant (positive) predictor of mask wearing. A number of the predictors were strongly correlated with each other. For example, the correlation coefficient linking Openness with the percentage of Democratic state legislators was r = 0.53. Commonality regression partitions the explained variance between the amount that is unique to each predictor and the amount that is shared among subsets of correlated predictors. This approach revealed that the common variance shared by Conscientiousness, Openness and partisan politics accounted for 34% of the state differences in Covid-19 policy and 35% of the state differences in mask wearing. The results reflect the importance of personality in how Americans have responded to the Covid-19 pandemic. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-09-27 /pmc/articles/PMC8502796/ /pubmed/34646213 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.729774 Text en Copyright © 2021 Heyman. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Heyman, Gene M.
Personality and Its Partisan Political Correlates Predict U.S. State Differences in Covid-19 Policies and Mask Wearing Percentages
title Personality and Its Partisan Political Correlates Predict U.S. State Differences in Covid-19 Policies and Mask Wearing Percentages
title_full Personality and Its Partisan Political Correlates Predict U.S. State Differences in Covid-19 Policies and Mask Wearing Percentages
title_fullStr Personality and Its Partisan Political Correlates Predict U.S. State Differences in Covid-19 Policies and Mask Wearing Percentages
title_full_unstemmed Personality and Its Partisan Political Correlates Predict U.S. State Differences in Covid-19 Policies and Mask Wearing Percentages
title_short Personality and Its Partisan Political Correlates Predict U.S. State Differences in Covid-19 Policies and Mask Wearing Percentages
title_sort personality and its partisan political correlates predict u.s. state differences in covid-19 policies and mask wearing percentages
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8502796/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34646213
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.729774
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