big five personality 1
Key Points
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.
Method
The study used alongitudinal designwith 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
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?
Which Factors Were Associated With Individual Differences in Big Five Trait Change?
How Was Big Five Trait Change Associated With Downstream 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.
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
Limitations
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.
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Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc
BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education
Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.
Saul McLeod, PhD
BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester
Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.
