Did you change during the pandemic? A new study suggests yes

The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken our daily lives by bringing changes. According to a new study published Wednesday, our personalities are also modified.

“The pandemic has provided an unprecedented opportunity to look at how a collective stressful event affects personality,” said study lead author Angelina Sutin, professor of medicine at Florida State University.

For a long time, psychologists believed that the characteristics of a person are the same. However, by looking at levels of neuroticism, extroversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness and comparing them to data collected in 2021 and 2022, the researchers found changes in the American population’s personality.

Levels of extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness declined in the years after the pandemic began. Young people are particularly affected. At present, there are only theories that explain this phenomenon.

“Personality is less stable in young people,” Ms. Sutin said. “But at the same time, the pandemic has disrupted what young people should be doing. They’re expected to be in school, at the start of their career or in a career transition. They need to go out and meet people.”

It should be noted that this study aims to identify population trends.

“So it’s not surprising that you don’t see the same change in yourself or your loved ones,” explains the researcher.

It’s also unclear whether the pandemic triggered these changes in the population, according to Brent Roberts, professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who was not involved in the study.

Even if these changes are detected, researchers cannot say how long they may last, Ms Sutin added.