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People love personality tests. The well-known Myers-Briggs test—taken by 50 million people since the 1960s—asks a number of questions, then gives you a four-letter acronym describing your personality type, strengths, and preferences. It denotes whether you are an extrovert versus introvert, sensory versus intuitive, thinker versus feeler, and judger versus perceiver. Some identify themselves by their personality type, and even seek out others based on theirs, holding onto the idea that personalities are constant. But what if they’re not?
Past studies have found personalities are generally immune to environmental factors like hurricanes and earthquakes, but a group of researchers found that the global COVID-19 pandemic may be an exception.
A new study published Wednesday in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, a peer-reviewed journal in the Public Library of Science, suggests the pandemic played a role in shifting our personality traits more than researchers expected, with more drastic changes in younger adults.
“We know that personality is pretty stable,” Angelina Sutin, lead researcher on the study and professor of behavioral science and social medicine at Florida State University College of Medicine, tells Fortune. “It can and does change, but not that much. With the pandemic, it was really an unprecedented opportunity to look at how this collected stressor had an effect on personality.”
The researchers used data from the Understanding America Study of the University of Southern California to examine results from over 7,000 U.S. adults ages 18 to 109 before and during the pandemic. Personality was measured using a scale to assess five traits: neuroticism (is moody), openness (has an active imagination), conscientiousness (is a reliable worker), agreeableness (is generally trusting), and extraversion (is talkative).
How the pandemic affected personalities
The study echoed previous findings that neuroticism actually decreased from the period before the pandemic started to the early spring months of 2020, which may in part be because the beginning of the pandemic caused major outpourings of support with people rallying together and could have improved individual emotional stability, Sutin says. It may also be because people were able to point to a stressor as the reason for their overwhelm or anxiety versus blaming themselves, she speculates.
However, as the pandemic wore on, personality traits changed more drastically. Measures of extroversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness all declined compared to participants’ pre-pandemic personalities. Experts say shifts like this usually take a decade.
“There has been a lot of upheaval in society,” Sutin says, referring to the emotional impact of the pandemic along with the exacerbation of systemic racism and the global protests in 2021 that followed. “And that might be reflected in how the traits have changed.”
Young adults’ personality changed the most
Sutin and her team saw stark differences in personality changes among young people aged 18-29. Most notably, between 2021 and 2022, younger adults had an increase in neuroticism compared to pre-pandemic, while the oldest group stayed relatively the same. The middle-aged group, however, had less neuroticism. Conscientiousness and agreeableness also decreased more so for young adults during this time, more than double compared to middle-aged adults.
“There was this great disruption, especially for younger adults, at a developmental time when they’re supposed to be out doing things,” Sutin says.
Personality changes could lead to mental health challenges
These findings underscore dramatically the impact of the pandemic on young adults’ mental health.
“Neuroticism is a very consistent predictor of poor mental health outcomes like depression and anxiety, so it’s possible that an increase in neuroticism could [lead to] downstream increases in poor mental health,” Sutin says. “And conscientiousness is a trait that is important for educational and work outcomes for relationships [and] for physical health.”
While personality doesn’t dictate mental health outcomes directly, Sutin is pushing for more research into the longer-lasting effects personality change may have on well-being especially for the young adults most affected by personality change during the pandemic.
“We need to do what we can to help support younger adults as much as possible, so they can make better transitions into adulthood and reduce the stress that they face to help improve their mental health and long-term outcomes,” she says.
