When character forges the crisis: Personality traits of world leaders and differential policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic

The rapidly growing scholarship on the COVID-19 crisis has focused on a variety of macro-level factors to understand government policy responses. The current study addresses an important gap in this line of research by evaluating the extent to which government leaders’ personality traits have led to divergent policy responses during the pandemic. To do so, we use data from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker initiative to measure differences in both the speed and magnitude of these responses across countries and NEGex, a dataset that maps the personality traits of current heads of government (presidents or prime ministers) in 61 countries. Our results show that personality matters. We find that world leaders scoring high on “plasticity” (extraversion, openness) provide a stronger overall response, as well as a more rapid response in terms of financial relief. Whereas, leaders scoring high on “stability” (conscientiousness, agreeableness, emotional stability) offer both a quicker and stronger financial relief response. Our findings underscore the need to account for the personality of decision-makers when exploring policy decisions taken during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as during other crisis situations.