The Relationship between Personality Traits, Emotional Intelligence, and Covid-19 Severity: A Cross-Sectional Study

The Coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic affected the entire world during the last few years, creating long-term social and economic problems in the aftermath. The current study investigated how long-term psychological variables, such as personality, trait emotional intelligence, and other socio-demographic factors were related to the severity of the COVID-19 infection. The objective was to explore if there were significant correlations between personality traits and emotional competence (commonly referred to as emotional intelligence) and the severity of the COVID-19 disease and post-COVID adjustment in a group of patients who had suffered from COVID-19. A stratified random sample of 52 patients followed up by the post-COVID clinic of the University Hospital of the General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University (UHKDU) participated in the study. Their personality was measured using an adapted Sinhala version of the Big Five Inventory (BFI), and their trait emotional intelligence was measured by an adapted Sinhala version of the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire-Short Form (TEIQUE-SF). Socio-demographic variables were also recorded. The results of this study show that personality traits or traits of emotional intelligence were not significantly related to the severity of the COVID-19 infection. Out of the measured socio-demographic variables, employment status was observed to be the only variable to have an association with the severity of COVID-19. According to the findings of the current study, it was concluded that most psychiatric symptoms reported in post-COVID syndrome are more likely to be related to the infection than to the premorbid personality or other long-term psychological variables. Short-term stress due to unemployment appears to predispose individuals to more severe forms of COVID-19.