A post by Lisa Wagner and Fabian Gander
Nietzsche’s famous proverb suggests that that which does not kill us makes us stronger. In line with this idea, it has been suggested that negative or even traumatic experiences might go along with a “growth” in personality. In other words, people who go through such experiences might develop a more mature personality or experience “altruism born of suffering”.
Indeed, empirical research has shown that those who have experienced negative events report increased levels of relationships quality and appreciation of life. At the same time, it is unclear how valid these findings are for actual change. If people are only questioned on perceived positive changes after an event has occurred, we don't know whether any perceived growth is just a post hoc interpretation, can be attributed to memory biases, or whether such reports are indeed indicative of true growth.
To answer this question, we need longitudinal data on a person's level of character strengths before and after the event. However (and fortunately), major critical life events are rare and reported by very few people, and it is, therefore, difficult to conduct methodologically sound studies on longitudinal changes that take place following such life events.
The pandemic as a chance to overcome limitations in previous research
The COVID-19 pandemic provided the unfortunate opportunity to conduct such a study. The pandemic, and its associated restrictions, affected the lives of most people. Whether it was the restriction of the frequency or diversity of personal contacts, work-related changes, or concerns regarding the health of oneself or one’s surroundings, for many people, the pandemic went along with considerable changes in their everyday lives to which they had to adapt. People had to change their work habits, and redesign their leisure, social, and family life. From this perspective, the COVID-19 pandemic can be considered a collective challenge or life event. Therefore, one might ask: despite its negative impact, did the pandemic bring positive consequences for the individual? Have people been able to grow and develop a better version of themselves following this challenge?
From a data collection that took place before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we had data on a large sample of participants who completed self-report instruments on their scores in 24 positively valued traits, so-called "character strengths", including such traits as creativity, courage, kindness, humility, and gratitude. After the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the restrictions in everyday life were gradually relaxed, we re-contacted these participants and invited them to participate in another survey. A total of 366 adults (76.5% women) agreed and provided information on whether they perceived changes in character strengths in themselves and in a close other. Additionally, a subsample (150 participants) provided information on their own current levels of character strengths after the pandemic. Thus, we had information on levels of character strengths before and after the pandemic, as well as subjectively perceived changes of character strengths in oneself and in other people.
Do character strengths predict prosocial behavior during the pandemic?
Finally, we were also interested in whether character strengths predicted compliance and voluntary engagement during the pandemic. Therefore, we asked participants to what extent they complied with the government regulations (e.g., keeping distance, washing hands, etc.), and whether they engaged in voluntary activities related to the pandemic (e.g., getting groceries for neighbours).
When we looked at the subjective perceptions of whether participants themselves changed, results suggested that most people believed that they had changed for the better. On average, people perceived that almost all of their character strengths increased, especially gratitude, appreciation of beauty and excellence, prudence, and humility. We found very similar results when analyzing the perceived changes in close others. Thus, following their experiences during the pandemic, people thought they and the ones around them became more grateful, more appreciative of physical or moral beauty (the appreciation of beauty and excellence that is not limited to physical beauty), more prudent and humble – among many more positive changes.
Does the individuals’ perception of growth match the actual pre-post changes?
However, when we compared the actual levels of character strengths reported before the first wave of the pandemic with the levels reported afterwards, a rather different picture emerged. Overall, there were very few changes; only the character strengths of humility and prudence showed an increase. Thus, it seems that people overestimate the extent of changes in their personality when directly asked about changes. This might be related to recall biases and the difficulty of remembering how we were in the past. For example, it has been previously suggested that when facing threatening events, people often respond with positive perceptions of themselves and the future. Our findings suggest that individuals might also overestimate positive changes. Thus, such perceived growth can unless exaggerated, also have adaptive consequences and support coping (e.g., Davies et al., 2021).
Furthermore, several character strengths also predicted behavior during the pandemic: those with higher pre-pandemic levels in judgment, perseverance, humility, and prudence reported behaving more in line with government regulations. Voluntary engagement (e.g., helping vulnerable people in the neighbourhood with their shopping) was predicted by higher levels of gratitude, bravery, love, and zest. Thus, knowledge of the levels of character strengths could help to address health campaigns especially regarding those who are expected to be less compliant with regulations.
So, has the pandemic made us better people?
In summary, our results suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic did not necessarily make us stronger or better people, despite what we might think. At best, we became more humble and more prudent in the aftermath. However, who we were before the pandemic did predict how we acted during.