Healthline: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Changed Our Personalities
“Experts say our personalities, measured across these traits, are generally pretty stable. Your score in any one of these dimensions can change over time, but for most people it happens at a glacial pace, often moving little over a period of decades.
When someone’s personality changes rapidly, it’s usually in response to a traumatic event of personal significance. Previous research has shown that personality traits don’t tend to change in response to things such as natural disasters.
That’s what makes this study so interesting.
Across the United States, more than 7,000 adults had their personalities measured during three time periods:
Pre-pandemic: May 2014 through February 2020
Acute phase: March 2020 through December 2020
Adaptation phase: January 2021 through February 2022
As the COVID-19 pandemic wore on into the adaptation phase, researchers reported, some people experienced more than a decade’s worth of personality change.
In particular, adults under the age of 30 experienced a substantial drop in conscientiousness as a group, whereas adults over the age of 65 became less neurotic compared to before their pre-pandemic baseline. Hispanic/Latino participants also experienced an especially large drop in extraversion.
The researchers also reported slight overall declines in extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness during the pandemic.”
Some Insights From This Article
Personality remains stable over time and usually only gradually changes over time through the course of life or responds to sudden changes such as trauma. However in the course of the COVID pandemic, a historic international crisis, many people experienced stressors and life circumstances that made an environment possible for personality change.
This report study showed that there were overall declines of extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness during the pandemic in comparison to the pre to post pandemic.
These traits in general are associated with healthier aging and lower incidence of future mental challenges, therefore this finding may have profound implications down the line. However, in that sense only time can tell. Perhaps given that 2 years was taken from our lives we would need 2 more years to finally resettle back to normal.
What effects did the pandemic have on your personality?
Full article is here!
#Personality #Pandemic #Change
@sunnyWriting4806
Interesting!
I definitely feel I have become a bit more introverted!
Thanks for sharing the article!💛💫
@innateJoy9602
Yes! Introversion can be caused by just us getting used to being inside the whole time. additionally some people report some difficulty getting back into communicating face to face and in person when the restrictions started loosening!
@sunnyWriting4806 Such massive changes and/or dangerous events always leave an impact in our lives. A few years ago there was the rumor that personality doesn't change. That's not true. Every single conversation, image, memory, experience is changing us a little bit at a time. Personallity is very delicate. However this can be very encouraging for those who want to get rid of some of their personality traits such as anxiety and fear. Changes are good sometimes and that's how we should see them. Thank you for the interesting post!
@calmDew1576
Yes! Personality is not constant, it changes as our lives changes and as we grow. However, I believe that this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it shows that we have the potential to grow everyday and change our lives for the better!