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The impact of family violence incidents on personality changes: An examination of social media users’ messages in C hina
Author(s) -
Li Sijia,
Liu Mingming,
Zhao Nan,
Xue Jia,
Wang Xuefei,
Jiao Dongdong,
Zhu Tingshao
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
psych journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.417
H-Index - 14
eISSN - 2046-0260
pISSN - 2046-0252
DOI - 10.1002/pchj.429
Subject(s) - agreeableness , conscientiousness , personality , neuroticism , openness to experience , psychology , big five personality traits , social media , extraversion and introversion , social psychology , world wide web , computer science
Abstract Changes in personality tend to be intertwined with life events (e.g., family violence [FV]). This study aimed to examine the personality changes before and after an FV incident using Weibo data. Samples were selected from 1.16 million Weibo users in China who had posted their own FV experience as victims. We used Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) to extract the linguistic features of these unstructured texts as the scores of participants’ personality. We built prediction models to measure and compare personality differences between the victim group and control group in Sample 1; and personality changes between the victim group and control group before and after an FV incident in Sample 2. Results showed that the victims’ neuroticism increased and conscientiousness decreased after experiencing FV. At the same time, their agreeableness and openness levels were lower than those of the control group. Implications and limitations are also discussed.