Department of Psychiatry, Vermont Center for Children, Youth, and Families, University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine, Burlington, VT, United States of America.
Vermont Department of Mental Health, Child, Adolescent, and Family Unit, Waterbury, VT, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2021 Mar 17;16(3):e0248895. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0248895. eCollection 2021.
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.
人格特质与多种健康结果有关。本研究旨在探讨人格特质与大学生适应 COVID-19 大流行之间的关系。研究样本包括 484 名大一学生（76%为女性），他们在 COVID-19 大流行扰乱学期之初参加了东北大学的大五人格测试（BFI）。学生通过手机应用程序，在学期前和大流行开始后（例如，个体内纵向设计），每天对情绪、感知压力水平和参与多项健康促进活动（如锻炼、正念、充足睡眠等）进行评分。结果正如预期的那样，尽管压力水平实际上有所下降，但在 COVID 期间，情绪和健康指数普遍下降。此外，无论 COVID 情况如何，情绪改善、感知压力降低以及更多参与健康促进活动与包括神经质（降低）、外向性（升高）、宜人性（升高）和尽责性（升高）在内的多种人格特质显著相关。更重要的是，混合效应模型被用于测试主要人格特质如何与 COVID 前和 COVID 期间的日常评分变化相互作用。发现显著的交互项，表明 COVID 对具有特定特质低水平和高水平的学生产生了不同的影响。例如，外向性水平越高，随着大流行的进展，情绪下降的幅度越大，而外向性水平较低的学生，随着时间的推移，情绪略有上升。这些数据支持这样的结论，即人格特质与心理健康有关，并在个体应对重大压力事件的能力中发挥作用。不同的特质也可能对不同类型的压力源更具适应性。
