Study shows how pandemic is changing people’s personalities

A team led by researchers at Florida State University (FSU) conducted a study of more than 7,000 people and concluded that the covid-19 pandemic has changed the personality trajectory of people in the United States, especially young adults. Published in Wednesday (28) PLoS ONEused work The Big Five Personality Factor model.

These five features are defined by the lexical method, meaning that they are based on linguistic analysis. (neuroticism, extroversion, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness) According to the research, it has been “considered relatively impervious to environmental demands in adulthood” until now.

And while previous studies have failed to link collective stressful events such as earthquakes and hurricanes to personality changes, the coronavirus pandemic was considered a unique opportunity to test this hypothesis, given its global scope.

How was the work done?

At work, researchers used Longitudinal personality assessments of 7,109 people She enrolled in the Online Understanding America Study, a family panel organized by the University of Southern California (SCU). A total of 18,623 assessments were analyzed (approximately 2.62 per participant). The ages of the participants were between 18 and 109, 41.2% of them were male.

To detect possible personality changes, the researchers compared measurements taken before the pandemic (May 2014 to February 2020), the first year (March to December 2020), and during the decline (2021 to 2022).

What did the study find?

As with previous studies, little changes in personality traits were observed in the pre-pandemic period, but from 2021 onwards, there were significant decreases in extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness compared to personality factors assessed pre-pandemic.

These changes were primarily driven by age, but not by race or level of formal education. For this reason, some young adults have shown intermittent maturity traits that are a hallmark of adulthood. associated with increased neuroticism, reduced agreeableness, and conscientiousness. The older adult group did not show any statistically significant changes.

The authors suggest that if these changes are permanent, stressful events involving the entire population could distort the personality trajectory. mostly in young adults.

ARTICLE – PLoS ONE – DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0274542.