How people react to the threat of disease could mean COVID-19 is reshaping personalities

In an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle, Vivian Zayas, professor of psychology, says the effects of the coronavirus pandemic will be imprinted on the personality of the United States for a long time.

“No doubt in the future people will mourn those who’ve died and remember the challenges of this period. But how would COVID-19 shape people’s personalities – and into what?” she writes in the piece. “I am a psychology researcher interested in how people’s minds shape, and are shaped by, their life circumstances. Human beings are born into this world ready to deal with basic problems – forming close relationships, maintaining status in groups, finding mates and avoiding disease. People are adaptable, though, and react to the circumstances they find themselves in."

Read the story in the Houston Chronicle.