Psychological Types of Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

The article presents the results of an empirical study aimed at analyzing the relationship between the psychological characteristics of a person, their percep-tions of COVID-19, their attitudes towards vaccination and their behavior in a pandemic situation. 2,786 people took part in the online survey. Participants completed the following methods: the Pandemic Opinions ques-tionnaire, Big Five Inventory-2, D. Amir - khan's Coping Strategies Indicator, State Anxiety Subscale from the Ch. D. Spiel -berger's State-Trait Anxiety Scale. The study revealed a variety of psychological prerequisites for such forms of adaptive response to the pandemic as the implementation of preventive measures and the adoption of vaccination. These included personality traits, coping strategies, emotional state, and pandem-ic-related perceptions. A variety of typi-cal response options in a pandemic situ-ation has been found. Three psychologi-cal types were distinguished among those who actively carried out preven-tive measures and two types among those who poorly performed these meas-ures. Three types of people were identi-fied who have a positive attitude towards vaccination, and three types in the group with a negative attitude towards it. Each type was characterized by a specific set of personality traits, coping strategies, and pandemic-related perceptions. The results of the study suggest three main pathways that lead people to an adaptive response to a pan-demic. The first is largely due to a per-son's stable personal characteristics (responsibility, benevolence, adaptabili-ty of coping strategies), the second is associated with a person's acute experi-ence of their vulnerability to coron-avirus, while the third, seemingly, has extrapersonal determinants associated with a person's social environment.