Moral Disengagement and Generalized Social Trust as Mediators and Moderators of Rule-Respecting Behaviors During the COVID-19 Outbreak

Abstract

In this study, we tested a theoretical model with moral disengagement, a mediator, and generalized social trust (GST), a mediator and a moderator of the relationship between personality traits and rule-respecting behaviors (i.e., social distancing and stay-at-home), during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak in Italy. The data were collected on 1520 participants (61% males). General results are threefold: (1) moral disengagement mediated the relationship between emotional stability, narcissism, psychopathy, and social distancing; (2) among components of GST, trust in Government mediated the relationship between psychopathy and social distancing; trust in known others mediated the relationship between emotional stability, agreeableness, and Machiavellianism with total number of exits; trust in unknown others mediated the relationship of emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and psychopathy with average daily number of exits; (3) GST moderated the indirect effect of personality traits on rule-respecting behaviors through moral disengagement. The theoretical and practical importance of these results is discussed.