The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has strongly affected individuals and societies worldwide. In this review and meta-
analysis, we investigated how aversive personality traits – that is, relatively stable antisocial personality characteristics – related to how
individuals perceived, evaluated, and responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. Across 34 studies with overall 26,780 participants, we found that
people with higher scores in aversive personality traits were less likely to perceive guidelines and restrictions to curb the spread of the virus as
protective, to engage in health behaviors related to COVID-19, and to engage in non-health-related prosocial behavior
related to COVID-19. We found no consistent relation between aversive personality and negative effect regarding the pandemic.
The results thus indicate the importance of aversive personality traits in understanding individual differences with regard to COVID-19.