Anthropologists explained who was responsible for toilet paper shortages during the onset of the worldwide health scare. Certain traits are common for people who bought more supplies than they needed: Conscientious and emotional people tend to be prone to such behaviours.
Who was stockpiling toilet paper in 2020?
Scientists from Max Plansk Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology discovered that people who score high in emotionality and conscientiousness were at the front of stockpilers when the news about pandemics hit the world.
Over 1,000 people from 35 countries provided answers to the questionnaire designed to discover personal traits linked to buying in bulk under threat via HEXACO scale that analyses 6 main personality domains.
The people answered surveys at the end of March 2020.
As expected, people who were feeling more threatened shown the trend to stockpile.
- 20% of this behaviour was attributed to emotionality: Individuals who habitually tend to be anxious.
- Conscientiousness was also a strong predictor: People who are diligent and organized were likely to purchase more supplies than usual.
- Older people were more guilty of bulk-buying than the younger generation.
- American purchased more than Europeans.
However, even though scientists discovered certain links in personality traits and the behaviour of bulk-buying, they were only able to account for 12% of the variables. This means, other factors are responsible for that in a higher extent.
“We know that we don’t know anything,” this could be the conclusion. While personality traits seem to be a factor, it’s apparently not the strongest predictor of who is going to empty the store shelves and who won’t.
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