Big Five Personality Trait Change Across a Major Global Stressor

The COVID-19 pandemic, a major global stressor, disrupted daily life and could catalyze big five personality trait change by altering social and health behaviors, introducing new stressors, and causing societal shifts, which may accumulate to drive lasting changes in traits.

Kyle, K. M., Ford, B. Q., & Willroth, E. C. (2024). Personality Trait Change Across a Major Global Stressor. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672241228624

Key Points

• On average, conscientiousness increased slightly and extraversion decreased slightly across the 21-month study period during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Individual trajectories varied around these average trajectories, with few factors predicting these individual differences.
• Greater increases in conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness, and greater decreases in neuroticism were associated with better well-being and fewer mental and physical health symptoms.
• The research provides evidence that traits can change in the context of a major global stressor and that socially desirable patterns of trait change are associated with better health.
• Limitations include the first measurement occurring after the pandemic declaration, all self-report measures, and the sample consisting of U.S. Amazon Mechanical Turk users.

Rationale

Personality traits are malleable and can change in response to major life events (Bleidorn et al., 2018; Roberts & Wood, 2006). Personality trait change may have important consequences for health (Hampson, 2019; Mroczek & Spiro, 2007).

The COVID-19 pandemic, a major global stressor that disrupted daily life, provides a unique opportunity to examine personality trait change and its associations with health in the context of a public health crisis.

Previous studies on personality change during the pandemic have shown inconsistent findings (Ahmed et al., 2020; Condon & Weston, 2021; Sutin et al., 2020, 2022), and the present study aims to provide a clearer picture by examining longer-term trait change across later phases of the pandemic.

Method

The study used a longitudinal design with four measurement occasions of personality (March 2020, July 2020, April 2021, and December 2021) and two measurement occasions of health (April 2021 and December 2021).

Procedure

Participants completed online surveys at multiple time points, including measures of personality traits, sociodemographic characteristics, perceived stress, pandemic-related factors, and health.

Sample

The sample included 504 diverse U.S. participants, ranging from 18 to 73 years old (M = 38.34, SD = 11.22), 54.0% women, 44.2% men, 0.6% nonbinary, and 1.2% declined to report their gender.

The sample was diverse in terms of racial and ethnic identity.

Measures

• Big Five personality traits: BFI-2-XS (Soto & John, 2017)
• Sociodemographic characteristics
• Perceived stress: 4-item Perceived Stress Scale (Cohen et al., 1983)
• Pandemic-related factors: perceived impact, self-isolating and social-distancing behaviors, exposure to COVID-19, and loss of a loved one
• Health: well-being (life satisfaction and psychological well-being), mental health symptoms (anxiety and depression), and physical health symptoms (PHQ; Schat et al., 2005)

Statistical measures

The study used random-intercept, random-slope multilevel growth curve models, paired sample t-tests, reliable change indices (RCIs), and multiple regression analyses.

Results

How Did Big Five Traits Change During the COVID-19 Pandemic?

• Conscientiousness slightly increased on average, particularly in the later months of the pandemic, possibly reflecting sustained engagement in conscientious behaviors to adhere to public health precautions and restrictions.
• Extraversion slightly decreased on average, particularly during the first wave of the pandemic, possibly due to reduced sociability from social distancing measures, lockdowns, and fewer positive events and emotions.
• Neuroticism slightly decreased, on average, but only later in the pandemic, possibly because people began to adapt to the new COVID-19 context over time, resulting in more emotional stability.
• Individuals differed in the direction and degree of trait change, with some increasing and others decreasing.

Which Factors Were Associated With Individual Differences in Big Five Trait Change?

• Participants who lost a loved one due to COVID-19 experienced steeper declines in extraversion relative to those who did not experience a loss.
• No evidence was found for associations between sociodemographic characteristics, general perceived stress, or other pandemic-specific factors and individual differences in Big Five trait change.
• The largely null results highlight the complexity and difficulty of predicting or explaining individual differences in personality trait change, possibly because individuals respond differently even to similar experiences.

How Was Big Five Trait Change Associated With Downstream Health?

• Individuals who experienced socially desirable patterns of personality trait change during the pandemic (i.e., increases in conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness, and decreases in neuroticism) experienced better health.
• In primary analyses, longitudinal increases in extraversion were associated with better health across domains, suggesting that maintaining or increasing extraversion may be protective within a context in which extraversion decreases are normative.
• In exploratory analyses, increases in conscientiousness and agreeableness and decreases in neuroticism were also associated with better health, suggesting that socially desirable patterns of personality trait change in the stressful pandemic context may reflect resilience or act as a protective factor.
• Strong associations were observed between trait level and health, providing evidence that even small changes in traits may be important for health.
• It is unclear whether personality trait level and change impacted health, or whether people with better health were more likely to experience socially desirable patterns of trait change across the pandemic, and third variables may have influenced both trait change and health.

Insight

The findings suggest that personality traits can change in response to a major global stressor, and that individuals who experienced socially desirable patterns of trait change (e.g., increases in conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness, and decreases in neuroticism) had better health outcomes.

This extends previous research by examining longer-term trait change across later phases of the pandemic and by investigating associations between trait change and health in the context of a public health crisis.

Future research could explore the specific mechanisms driving trait change and individual differences during and following major life events, and use more sophisticated causal inference approaches to disentangle the effects of trait change on health and vice versa.

Strengths

• The study used longitudinal measures to examine Big Five trait change.
• The study investigated associations between trait change and a broad array of health domains.
• The study was conducted in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, a major global stressor.
• The study used a diverse sample.
• The study employed both reliable change indices and growth curve models to analyze trait change.
• Sensitivity analyses were conducted within the subsample of participants who provided personality data on all four measurement occasions.

Limitations

• The first measurement occasion occurred just days after the pandemic declaration, making it difficult to distinguish between trait change initiated by the pandemic and trait change reflecting returns to baseline levels.
• Trait change may have been coincidental to the pandemic or caused by other events during the same timeframe.
• All measures were assessed with self-report, which may have inflated associations due to shared method variance.
• Younger, less conscientious participants and those with more physical health problems were more likely to drop out of the study or skip measurement occasions, leading to selective attrition.
• The sample was comprised of U.S. Amazon Mechanical Turk users, which may limit the generalizability of the findings to other contexts.

Implications

The results suggest that personality traits can change in response to major life events and that socially desirable patterns of trait change are associated with better health outcomes, even in contexts with strong situational influences on health.

This has implications for understanding the malleability of personality and its role in health and well-being.

Variables such as the specific nature of the life event, individual differences in the perception and response to the event, and the fit between the person and their changing context may influence the patterns and consequences of trait change.

References

Primary reference

Kyle, K. M., Ford, B. Q., & Willroth, E. C. (2024). Personality Trait Change Across a Major Global Stressor. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672241228624

Other references

Ahmed, A., Mukta, M. S. H., Muntasir, F., Rahman, S., Islam, A. N., & Ali, M. E. (2020). Can covid-19 change the Big Five personality traits of healthcare workers? In Proceedings of the 7th international conference on networking, systems and security (pp. 12–17). https://doi.org/10.1145/3428363.3428370

Bleidorn, W., Hopwood, C. J., & Lucas, R. E. (2018). Life events and personality trait change. Journal of Personality, 86, 83–96.

Cohen, S., Kamarck, T., & Mermelstein, R. (1983). A global measure of perceived stress. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 24(4), 385–396.

Condon, D. M., & Weston, S. J. (2021). Personality states of the union. Collabra: Psychology, 7, 30140.

Hampson, S. E. (2019). Personality development and health. In D. P. McAdams, R. L. Shiner, & J. L. Tackett (Eds.), Handbook of personality development (pp. 489–502). The Guilford Press.

Mroczek, D. K., & Spiro, A. (2007). Personality change influences mortality in older men. Psychological Science, 18, 371–376.

Roberts, B. W., & Wood, D. (2006). Personality development in the context of the neo-socioanalytic model of personality. In D. K. Mroczek, T. D. Little, D. K. Mroczek, & T. D. Little (Eds.), Handbook of personality development (pp. 11–39). Lawrence Erlbaum.

Schat, A. C., Kelloway, E. K., & Desmarais, S. (2005). The Physical Health Questionnaire (PHQ): Construct validation of a self-report scale of somatic symptoms. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 10, 363.

Soto, C. J., & John, O. P. (2017). Short and extra-short forms of the Big Five Inventory-2: The BFI-2-S and BFI-2-XS. Journal of Research in Personality, 68, 69–81.

Sutin, A. R., Luchetti, M., Aschwanden, D., Lee, J. H., Sesker, A. A., Strickhouser, J. E., . . . Terracciano, A. (2020). Change in five-factor model personality traits during the acute phase of the coronavirus pandemic. PLOS ONE, 15, Article e0237056.

Sutin, A. R., Stephan, Y., Luchetti, M., Aschwanden, D., Lee, J. H., Sesker, A. A., & Terracciano, A. (2022). Differential personality change earlier and later in the coronavirus pandemic in a longitudinal sample of adults in the United States. PLOS ONE, 17(9), Article e0274542.

Keep Learning

• How might the specific nature of a major life event influence the patterns and extent of personality trait change?
• What individual differences (e.g., in event perception, coping strategies, or social support) might explain why some people experience more or less trait change in response to the same event?
• How can researchers use more sophisticated causal inference approaches to disentangle the effects of personality trait change on health and vice versa?
• What are the potential mechanisms through which personality trait change influences health outcomes, and how might these mechanisms differ across different health domains (e.g., well-being, mental health, physical health)?
• How can clinicians or policymakers use knowledge about the malleability of personality and its associations with health to promote well-being and resilience in the face of major life stressors?