Personality psychology in times of crisis: Profile-specific recommendations on how to deal with COVID-19

The early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic posed a twofold global health threat: Besides the evident danger to human life, the corona crisis is also a psychological crisis. Psychologists worldwide have contributed to cushion the distress that is laid on many societies and enforce adaptive coping strategies. However, psychological support in the past has often been broadly applied, has not been particularly parsimonious and has often been focused on severe psychological stressors. In this brief report we describe the development and application of a low-threshold tool that generates personality-specific recommendations on how to functionally cope with the psychological challenges of the corona crisis. The tool gained widespread attention in Germany and many other countries and was well received by users. It demonstrates how psychological knowledge from personality and health psychology can be combined to be of very concrete use for many people in a threatening situation. We also show that personality is related to health behavior in a crisis in a meaningful way, providing further evidence that personality-specific advice can be a useful approach for supporting persons to cope with the crisis.