

All the responses came from the longitudinal Understanding America Study, organized by University of Southern California. To measure the changes, Sutin and her team analyzed surveys from three time periods: once pre-pandemic, before March 2020, once in the early lockdown period in 2020, and once either in 2021 or 2022. all the collective good will that we had, we lost, and that might have been very significant for personality." Maturity interrupted? "But in the second year, with all of that support falling away and then the open hostility and social upheaval around restrictions. "The first year there was this real coming together," Sutin says. Sutin hypothesizes that personality traits may have changed as public sentiment about the pandemic shifted. These changes were especially pronounced among young adults. In the later period of the pandemic, the researchers noted significant declines in the traits that help us navigate social situations, trust others, think creatively, and act responsibly. Shots - Health News Personality Can Change Over A Lifetime, And Usually For The Better There was a completely different pattern of change," says study author Angelina Sutin, an assistant professor of behavioral sciences and social medicine at the Florida State University College of Medicine. In the current study, they were curious if they would find different personality changes in the second and third year of the pandemic. The researchers had previously found a small, counterintuitive change in personality early in the pandemic: They found a decrease in neuroticism, the personality trait associated with stress and negative emotions.

It's rare to see population-wide personality shifts, even after stressful events, but in a new study in the journal PLOS One, psychologists found just that in the wake of the pandemic. Typically, major personality traits remain fairly stable throughout life, with most change happening in young adulthood or when stressful personal life events occur. New research suggests it may have changed Americans' personalities, too, and not for the better.

The global coronavirus pandemic disrupted almost everything about our lives, from how we work and go to school, to how we socialize (Zoom happy hours, anyone?!), and ultimately strained trust in many of the overarching systems we depend on, from health care to government.
