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Fall From Grace: Increased Loneliness and Depressiveness Among Extraverted Youth During the German COVID‐19 Lockdown
Author(s) -
Alt Philipp,
Reim Julia,
Walper Sabine
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of research on adolescence
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.342
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1532-7795
pISSN - 1050-8392
DOI - 10.1111/jora.12648
Subject(s) - loneliness , extraversion and introversion , psychology , german , big five personality traits , personality , covid-19 , developmental psychology , clinical psychology , social psychology , medicine , history , disease , archaeology , pathology , infectious disease (medical specialty)
The COVID‐19 pandemic has substantially affected young people’s social and emotional life. Based on longitudinal data provided by 843 adolescents (57.3% female) of the German Family Panel (pairfam), we investigated effects of extraversion on changes in loneliness and depressiveness between 2018 and 2019 and the first German COVID‐19 lockdown in the first half of 2020. Findings of latent change modeling show that highly extraverted adolescents experienced a larger rise in depressiveness, and a third of this total effect was mediated through increases in loneliness. These results contradict previous work evidencing lower depressiveness among extraverted youth and challenge the notion of extraversion as a mere protective factor. Under conditions of restricted access to others, this personality trait may become a burden.