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Abstract
In this paper, we consider the role of personality as a component of motivation in promoting or inhibiting the tendency to exhibit the satisficing response styles of midpoint, straightlining, and Don't Know responding. We assess whether respondents who are low on the Conscientiousness and Agreeableness dimensions of the Big Five Personality Inventory are more likely to exhibit these satisficing response styles. We find large effects of these personality dimensions on the propensity to satisfice in both face-to-face and self-administration modes and in probability and nonprobability samples. People who score high on Conscientiousness and Agreeableness were less likely to be in the top decile of straightlining and midpoint distributions. The findings for Don't Know responding were weaker and only significant for Conscientiousness in the nonprobability sample. We also find large effects across all satisficing indicators for a direct measure of cognitive ability, where existing studies have mostly relied on proxy measures of ability such as educational attainment. Sensitivity analysis suggests the personality effects are likely to be causal in nature.

Recently, attempts have been made to employ American trait psychology across cultures. From the perspective of contemporary psychological anthropology, these efforts appear likely to repeat certain fallacies of the culture and personality approach of the 1930s, such as the reification of concepts into causal entities and the use of mean scores to characterize and compare populations (and even nations). These dangers are noted, and some recent developments in psychological anthropology are briefly discussed.

To limit the transmission of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), it is important to understand the sources of social behavior for members of the general public. However, there is limited research on how basic psychological dispositions interact with social contexts to shape behaviors that help mitigate contagion risk, such as social distancing. Using a sample of 89,305 individuals from 39 countries, we show that Big Five personality traits and the social context jointly shape citizens' social distancing during the pandemic. Specifically, we observed that the association between personality traits and social distancing behaviors were attenuated as the perceived societal consensus for social distancing increased. This held even after controlling for objective features of the environment such as the level of government restrictions in place, demonstrating the importance of subjective perceptions of local norms.