Stockpiling during the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic can be conceptualized as a real-life social dilemma.
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We tested whether predictors for cooperative behavior from economic games generalize to the stockpiling dilemma.
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Honesty-Humility was the strongest (negative) correlate of stockpiling intentions and justifiability of stockpiling.
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Emotionality and Victim Sensitivity were positively related to stockpiling intentions.
Abstract
Prior research using economic games has shown that personality drives cooperation in social dilemmas. In this study, we tested the generalizability of these findings in a real-life social dilemma during the COVID-19 pandemic, namely stockpiling in the presence of low versus high resource scarcity. Honesty-Humility was negatively related to stockpiling intentions and justifiability of stockpiling. Moreover, we found a positive albeit weaker effect of Emotionality on stockpiling intentions. Victim Sensitivity was mostly positively associated with stockpiling intentions. None of the personality traits interacted with resource scarcity to predict stockpiling. Our findings replicate established associations between personality and cooperation in a real-life social dilemma, and suggest that the characteristics of interdependent situations during a pandemic additionally afford the expression of Emotionality.
