Can COVID-19 Change the Big5 Personality Traits of Healthcare Workers?

07, August 2020 | Bangladesh

Authors:

Abstract

To curb the spread of the coronavirus, authorities around the world implemented lockdown measures for months. In these locked down days, people as well as healthcare workers (HWs) are increasingly relying on social media platforms to socialize among themselves and get the latest updates of this pandemic situation. As a result, social media users’ interaction data have become a key resource in analyzing their behaviors. COVID-19 is the first global pandemic in the global scale after the appearance of social media. HWs such as physicians, nurses, technicians, and hospital support staff provide essential services to the patients with COVID-19 even after having lack of sufficient equipment, poor preparation, and risking their own lives. These HWs may experience sudden change in their personality traits due to pandemic, which are not studied in the existing literature. In this paper, we investigate how the pandemic influences Big5 personality traits of HWs using social media data. Our analysis shows that HWs’ neuroticism, conscientiousness, and extroversion have increased significantly due to pandemic. In contrast, we observe a decrease of HWs’ agreeableness and openness dimensions of Big5 personality