Unemployment Has Some Serious Psychological Implications

It’s not just your attitude that can take a turn for the worse when you’re out of work. Your personality can also change, research finds.

According to data published in the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Applied Psychology, unemployment has been proven to change people’s basic personality characteristics, often making folks less conscientious, agreeable, and/or open in their daily lives.

The study, conducted by a team of researchers from the U.K., asked more than 6,000 Germans to self-evaluate five of their core personality traits—agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism and openness—over a period of several years. Everyone in the sample began the study with a job, but part of the group lost their jobs and remained unemployed for the duration of the study. Others lost their job and found new employment.

The study’s authors discovered that while men initially exhibited an increase in agreeableness during unemployment, those levels diminished over time. In the long run, agreeableness in out-of-work men was lower than in men who were employed the entire time. Women, however, never saw a bump in agreeableness, as it simply declined with each year of unemployment.

“In early unemployment stages, there may be incentives for individuals to behave agreeably in an effort to secure another job or placate those around them, but in later years, when the situation becomes endemic, such incentives may weaken,” the study’s authors wrote.

The study challenges the notion that personality is made of unchanging traits, and suggests that public policy efforts to combat unemployment might extend beyond economic benefits.