How Our Personalities Were Transformed By COVID-19

Human beings are incredibly adaptable. Consider all the ways life has changed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. From shrinking social circles to becoming comfortable wearing face masks to learning what six feet of distance really looks like, our society has found ways to adjust to a new way of living out of sheer necessity. However, these transformations run even deeper than just what the eye can see. Beyond the obvious signs of physical distancing, people have been adapting to our changing world in other ways — especially when it comes to their personality.

What Our Research Reveals

Based on MyPrint® personality assessment data from the last year, while the core of what makes most individuals unique may have remained intact, there are clear trends that point to changes occurring in our personalities happening broadly. In particular, our research points to changes in the grit, thoroughness, structure and optimism dimensions of personality.

Here’s what the four most prominent changes we’re tracking in personality mean for individuals moving forward. Have you recognized any of these changes in your own personality?

Developing an Opportunistic Approach

Being opportunistic is an important part of the grit dimension of personality. Think of grit as an indicator of how determined an individual may be to stick with something they’ve started. A high level of grit can be a wonderful trait for anyone who is known for seeing every project to its completion. However, as the realities of life during COVID-19 became apparent, most individuals dialed down this particular trait. One explanation is that the situations many people faced required a shift in plans. That determined, or “gritty,” mindset has been shifted to an opportunistic approach, as the need to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances outside of anyone’s control have become more prevalent. In other words, rather than seeing each particular challenge to the end, many of us moved onto new opportunities that fit better into our new world of work.

Becoming More Easy Going

In a year in which many people put on sweatpants and embraced a more laid back approach to their work from makeshift home offices, it might not be all that surprising to learn that thoroughness moved closer to the “easy going” end of our personality scale. What this means is not necessarily an increase in sloppiness, but a preference for a higher quantity of work outputs over the quality of that work. After all, in many roles, the shift in work environments presented any number of new challenges, and an unfamiliar amount of unstructured time with which to get them done.

Prioritizing Spontaneity

Speaking of structure, raise your hand if you forgot which day of the week it was at least once in 2020. If your hand is in the air right now, don’t worry — you are not alone! Our research indicates that personalities dipped in their levels of structure over the course of 2020, leaning further into the spontaneous end of our scale.

Personally, I know my entire routine was completely upended in the last year. In a matter of days, my morning alarms, commute plans, meeting schedule and meal prep strategy went right out the window. Suddenly, if I wanted to sleep an extra hour, that was okay! If I felt like having a homemade omelet for breakfast on any given Wednesday, I could bust out the eggs and get cracking! However, this shift towards less structure also had effects well beyond extra snoozes and creative meals. The lines became blurred around which types of projects needed to be done when. The boundaries between work and home were breached.

Increased Optimism

On the bright side, personalities appear to have been pushed to the positive end of our optimism scale! At first glance, this trend might appear to be counterintuitive. After all, in a year filled with so much darkness, how could optimism be on the rise? It turns out that this may be the greatest indication of human resilience revealed in our analysis. When faced with adversity, individuals have time and time again shown the ability to find even the smallest silver linings in a given situation. As our goals collectively shifted from narrow-minded personal achievements to group survival, small wins became reasons for real celebration.

As vaccinations are administered, the world stands poised to step forward into another stage in the fight against COVID-19. Even as we remain hopeful that this virus will someday fade away entirely, the changes we experienced in our personalities will remain long after the masks are put away. Human beings are incredibly adaptable. While that means individual traits may shift in response to situations beyond our control, what makes us unique carries on.

Are you interested in learning more about how your personality has evolved over time? Take (or retake) the MyPrint® soft skills assessment today to unlock personality insights. Click here to get started.