They find changes in personality apparently linked to the pandemic, especially in young people, who recognize themselves as more neurotic and less friendly than in 2019.
Personality’ is a category that defines us based on a biological component “or genetic, which we associate with temperament, and another environmental component, which can change”. It stems from behaviour.
It is something other than behaviour, which seems evident to have mutated in the last two years. We could cite as many testimonies as there are people in a country. You yourself could relate your experience: either you began to make bread –something that you did not do before–; or to eat better; or to drink more alcohol; or to go out less –when it was allowed–. But, for example, you will hardly have changed your personality to leave your beloved and predictable office job to dedicate yourself to traveling the world in a self-made hot air balloon, even if you are afraid of flying… Or yes.
No, we don’t come out better
In personality, there are five traits that are assumed to be little changeable over time and some, rather alien to our experiences, although not completely. Has the impact of the pandemic been collectively and individually so brutal that personality changes have occurred?
The subjects analysed, about 7,000 Americans, tended to become “more moody and more prone to stress, less cooperative or trusting, and less restrained and responsible.” But 2020 was not the same as 2021. In the second year of the pandemic, the youngest got fed up earlier and admitted to being less empathic, for example.
More neurotic, less empathic… It sounds like that 2020 slogan of “we will come out better” has not been fulfilled. In perspective, psychologist Sarai Fernández (Clinical Psychology Center) believes that statement could only have made sense from the point of view of resilience. But even with this sense, “we have reached the limit to overcome.”
We are social animals. When we stop training those social skills, we lose that emotional ‘muscle mass.’ This is especially noticeable in the “trait of neuroticism (the trait most closely linked to the state of mental health), especially in adolescents, who are in social learning.” Many of them have lived the passage from childhood to adolescence locked up or with a socialization almost limited to screens.
In general, previous studies had not detected associations between collective stressful events (earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.) and personality change. However, the coronavirus pandemic has affected the whole world and almost all aspects of life.
The studies carried out in extreme situations are the ones that allow you to see changes, minimal, but they are there,” he points out. “The pandemic had something unique. We lock ourselves up practically all of us on the planet. Humanity was equally threatened. Not even its impact is like that of a war. Wars are stressful for those who experience them, but they do not have a global impact.