Major life changes can affect personality, and the COVID-19 pandemic was the rare big life event that all humans shared together.
“This was a really unique opportunity to see how a life event that’s happening at the global stage to the entire population at the same time is changing personality,” said Emily Willroth, PhD, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.
Over the course of 21 months of the pandemic, Willroth and colleagues surveyed 500 people with diverse backgrounds, ages and from varied regions across the U.S. using the “Big 5” personality traits test that measures conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism and openness.
What they found, published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, was that over the course of the pandemic, people became more conscientious, even more so in the later months of the pandemic. In addition, extraversion dropped, though it eventually stabilized, and people exhibited slightly less neuroticism, on average.
The increase in conscientiousness was not surprising considering “people really had to engage in conscientious behaviors,” such as hand washing and distancing, and when people engage in behaviors repeatedly, it can lead to overall change in that broader trait, Willroth noted.
Extraversion, being outgoing and sociable, also declined for what would seem like obvious reasons, but Willroth pointed out that isolation isn’t the only factor in becoming less extraverted.
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