https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201015090439.htm

"We found that people who scored low on two personality traits -- openness to experience and neuroticism -- were less likely to shelter at home in the absence of stringent government measures, but that tendency went away when more restrictive government policies were implemented," said Friedrich Götz, MPhil, a doctoral candidate at the University of Cambridge and lead author of the study. "Initially, this was a bit astounding, as open individuals have traditionally been shown to be prone to risk taking, willing to deviate from cultural norms and likely to seek out and approach novel and unfamiliar things -- all of which would arguably put them at greater risk to ignore sheltering-in-place recommendations. However, at the same time, openness is also related to accurate risk perceptions, universalism and humankind identification. Thus, in the digitalized world in which the current pandemic occurred, these qualities may have led open individuals to follow the COVID-19 outbreak in other countries, realize its severity and act accordingly."

The researchers used data from the "Measuring Worldwide COVID-19 Attitudes and Beliefs" project, a global survey that sought to assess participants' behaviors and perceptions of others' behaviors during the COVID-19 crisis as the pandemic unfolded. Götz and his colleagues analyzed responses from more than 101,000 participants in 55 countries where at least 200 people responded to the survey between March 20 and April 5, 2020. In addition to providing information on behavior, participants also provided sociodemographic data and answered a series of questions designed to measure the so-called Big Five personality traits: conscientiousness, neuroticism, agreeableness, extraversion and openness.