Personality trait predictors of adjustment during the COVID pandemic among college students

Abstract

Personality traits have been found to be related to a variety of health outcomes. The aim of this study was to examine how personality traits were associated with adjustment to the COVID pandemic in college students. The sample included 484 first-year university students (76% female) attending a northeastern university who completed the Big Five Inventory (BFI) personality assessment at the beginning of a semester that was disrupted by the COVID pandemic. Using a phone-based app, students completed daily ratings of mood, perceived stress levels, and engagement in a number of health promotion activities (exercise, mindfulness, adequate sleep, etc.) throughout the semester both before and after the onset of the pandemic (e.g., a within-person longitudinal design). Results, as expected, showed that mood and wellness indices generally declined during the COVID period, although stress levels actually decreased. Further, irrespective of COVID, improved mood, less perceived stress and greater participation in health promotion activities were significantly associated with a number of personality traits including neuroticism (lower), extraversion (higher), agreeableness (higher), and conscientiousness (higher). Of primary interest, mixed-effects models were used to test how major personality traits interacted with any changes in daily ratings from the pre-COVID to COVID period. Significant interactions terms were found suggesting differential impacts of the COVID epidemic for students with low versus high levels of particular traits. Higher levels of extraversion, for example, were found to be related to decreases in mood as the pandemic progressed in contrast to those with lower extraversion, for whom there was a slight increase in mood over time. These data support the conclusion that personality traits are related to mental health and can play a role in a person’s ability to cope with major stressful events. Different traits may also be more adaptive to different types of stressors.

Dispositional mindfulness mediates the relationship between conscientiousness and mental health-related issues in adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Our findings further demonstrate this association in adolescents. Our study also shows that, conversely, conscientiousness can lead to psychological problems: we found that conscientious individuals perceive more stress, which is inconsistent with previous studies ( Luo & Roberts, 2015 ; Rettew et al, 2021 ) in which conscientiousness was found to be a protective factor against perceived stress. This would seem to indicate that conscientiousness is a risk factor for stress levels during the COVID-19 pandemic.…”

“…Previous research has revealed that highly conscientious individuals are protected against the detrimental effects of anxiety, depression, and perceived stress ( Kotov et al, 2010 ; Tran et al, 2020 ). Moreover, recent work has examined the protective role of conscientiousness in the mental health-related issues of adults during the COVID-19 pandemic ( Nikčević et al, 2021 ; Rettew et al, 2021 ). However, less attention has been given to the specific issue of whether conscientious adolescents can better handle mental health-related issues when facing the COVID-19 pandemic.…”

A 6-Month Follow-Up Study on Worry and Its Impact on Well-Being During the First Wave of COVID-19 Pandemic in an Italian Sample

“…In particular, subjects with neurotic personality seem to be at greater risk of higher worry levels. Neurotic people are typically more likely to experience and report negative emotions, also in COVID-19 pandemic context as confirmed by other studies (Rettew et al, 2021). Indeed, Aschwanden et al (2021) showed that high neuroticism levels were associated with more COVID-related concern, and worry related to the pandemic duration.…”

“…During COVID-19 pandemic, personality traits and in particular neuroticism emerged as one of the correlates of most of psychopathological outcomes and distress, although not as uniformly as expected (Kroencke et al, 2020;Lee and Crunk, 2020;Modersitzki et al, 2020;Somma et al, 2020). Unfortunately, very few studies investigated the association between personality traits and adjustment to COVID-19 with a longitudinal methodology (Rettew et al, 2021;Zacher and Rudolph, 2021). In these studies, authors revealed that higher levels of neuroticism favored increases in distress (Rettew et al, 2021;Zacher and Rudolph, 2021); higher levels in emotional stability anticipated decreases in perceived stressfulness of the COVID-19 pandemic (Zacher and Rudolph, 2021); while higher levels in agreeableness and conscientiousness anticipated increases in mood (Rettew et al, 2021).…”

Which anxious adolescents were most impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic?

“…Conversely, individuals lower in social anxiety were likely initially anxious and concerned about the uncertainty of not seeing others and missing out on important social events (e.g., weddings and graduation parties). For instance, a recent study found greater decreases in mood during the pandemic for young adults higher in extraversion, compared to those lower in extraversion (Rettew et al, 2021).…”