Personality, Cognition, and Adaptability to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Associations with Loneliness, Distress, and Positive
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Personality, Cognition, and Adaptability to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Associations with Loneliness, Distress, and Positive and Negative Mood States Avi Besser 1 & Gordon L. Flett 2
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& Taryn Nepon & Virgil Zeigler-Hill
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Accepted: 23 October 2020/ # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract
The current research examined personality and individual difference factors associated with the perceived ability to adapt to the significant challenges accompanying the ongoing public health crisis concerning the COVID-19 pandemic. This cross-sectional study investigated the associations among self-reported adaptability to the pandemic and personality predispositions (dependency, self-criticism, mattering, and self-esteem), cognitive factors (positive, negative, and loneliness automatic thoughts), loneliness, distress, and mood states. A sample of 462 college students from Israel completed an online questionnaire after 10 weeks of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results confirmed that personality vulnerability factors underscored by a negative sense of self (i.e., self-criticism and dependency) and individual difference factors reflecting selfesteem, feelings of mattering, and fear of not mattering are associated in meaningful ways with adaptability to the pandemic, loneliness, distress, negative mood states, and positive mood states. Most notably, higher self-reported adaptability to the pandemic is associated with lower dependency, self-criticism, and fear of not mattering, and higher levels of selfesteem and mattering. The findings attest to the central role of adaptability and related individual difference factors in acclimatizing to the numerous changes and challenges associated with the COVID-19 crisis. The theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed. Keywords Coronavirus . COVID-19 . Personality . Adaptability . Dependency, self-criticism, self-esteem, mattering . Loneliness, distress
Avi Besser and Gordon L. Flett contributed equally to this work.
* Avi Besser [email protected] * Gordon L. Flett [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction
At present, people around the world are coping with the COVID-19 pandemic which is a global health crisis that has already claimed the lives of over 1.1 million people. We are all experiencing a prolonged stress situation that has most, if not all, of the elements that create conditions for significant and persistent distress. Most accounts of the stress and challenges involve a focus on the uncertainty and the threat to health and well-being of the individual person and her or his friends and family members. Stress also is being experienced by the significant disruption to people’s daily routines and lives in general. Some of this stress and distress comes from people learning things about themselves that perhaps they never wished to learn as those individuals who thought they were resilient find out that th
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