The Big Five Personality Traits and Social Support During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Supporters, the Supported, and the Overlooked

Abstract

Social support can benefit its recipients and even its providers and is especially important in times of crisis. During the COVID-19 pandemic, support from society and personal networks became particularly crucial but individuals greatly differed in their support reception and provision. The Big Five personality traits may be key to explaining these interindividual differences: In this study, we investigated their impact on the support provided, received and additionally needed during the COVID-19 pandemic using data collected in October 2020 in a large German sample (N = 3330). The Big Five personality traits predicted support received from the state, civil society and the social network, with extraversion and openness emerging as positive and conscientiousness and emotional stability as negative predictors. The need for additional support was predicted positively by openness and negatively by conscientiousness, emotional stability and agreeableness. Support provision was predicted by all traits, positively by extraversion and openness and negatively by conscientiousness and emotional stability. Notably, agreeableness showed positive associations with social but negative associations with societal support reception and provision. Our findings highlight the importance of personality in social support processes during crises and the need to distinguish between different support sources. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.