Covid pandemic ‘may have changed people’s personalities’

The Covid-19 pandemic could have altered people’s personalities, new research has revealed.

The changes found were equivalent to how someone’s personality would normally change over a decade.

Previous studies have, in general, found no association between stressful events which affect a large number of people - such as earthquakes and hurricanes - and personality change.

However, due to the fact that the pandemic was a world event and altered nearly every aspect of everyday life, researchers from Florida State University College of Medicine think that is has changed the way that we think, feel and behave.

The authors of the study think that younger adults have been most affected by the pandemic, becoming more neurotic, more prone to stress and less cooperative.

A team of researchers, led by Dr Angelina Sutin, assessed the personalities of 7,109 people who were enrolled in the online Understanding America Study.

Traits such as neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness were looked at to see how they differed between pre-pandemic (May 2014 – February 2020), early pandemic (March – December 2020) and the later in the pandemic period (2021 – 2022).

Participants ranged in age from 18 to 109 and were majority female. Overall, 18,523 personality assessments were studied - almost three per participant.

Results - consistent with other studies - showed relatively few changes between the pre-pandemic and 2020 personality traits, with only a small decline in neuroticism.

However, traits such as extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness all declined when 2021-2022 data was compared to data for pre-pandemic personality traits.

Younger adults also showed increased neuroticism and decreased agreeableness and conscientiousness.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, the oldest group of adults showed no statistically significant changes in traits.

The authors came to the conclusion that should these changes last, findings suggest that population-wide stressful events can slightly alter the trajectory of personality development. This is particularly acutely seen in younger adults.

“There was limited personality change early in the pandemic but striking changes starting in 2021,” they explained.

“Of most note, the personality of young adults changed the most, with marked increases in neuroticism and declines in agreeableness and conscientiousness.

“That is, younger adults became moodier and more prone to stress, less cooperative and trusting, and less restrained and responsible.”

The results of the study have been published in the journal PLOS ONE.