Personality predictors of longitudinal adaptation following the COVID-19 pandemic

Although COVID-19 mitigation efforts were transformative for American's social, educational, work, and emotional lives, it is unclear how they adapted in the years after the worst of the pandemic subsided. Given the lack of longitudinal information, we adopted an exploratory approach to examine how self-reported social, professional (i.e., education/work) preference-related, and well-being outcomes of 248 American college students from a Michigan-based university changed from two waves, in 2020/2021 (while in college) and 2025 (after graduation). In-person contact increased, online learning was remembered more positively, and well-being improved over time. Personality traits matched preferences for educational, professional development, and occupational opportunities and well-being (e.g., extraversion was linked to preferring in-person jobs and lower loneliness). Nevertheless, personality was a modest contributor to adaptation-consistent with contextual modulation of individual tendencies. These findings shed light on the normative-and individual differences in-adaptation following the pandemic, providing a framework for implementing tailored interventions for social, educational, professional, and emotional outcomes across different contexts and cultural settings.