Pandemic Study Links Personality, Support and Interpersonal Estrangement

Openness, extraversion and neuroticism were positively associated with estrangement, while the analysis also identified indirect associations involving social support for agreeableness, extraversion and neuroticism. Researchers measured personality and social support in a community sample early in the pandemic and assessed estrangement over the course of the pandemic at the later follow-up. The design linked two waves of reported information rather than experimentally changing personality or support, so the results describe statistical associations and do not establish that personality caused relationships to weaken or end.

The available report does not provide the sample size, sampling procedures, detailed measurements or uncertainty estimates, limiting assessment of the findings’ precision and representativeness. Openness, extraversion and neuroticism each had positive associations with interpersonal estrangement. For agreeableness and extraversion, the indirect effects through social support were negative: higher social support was associated with a lower likelihood of estrangement.

Neuroticism showed a positive indirect effect, a pattern the researchers described as suggesting that its association with estrangement may occur partly through reduced social support. Together, the findings connect individual personality dispositions, perceived social support and later reports of interpersonal estrangement during a period of societal disruption. The study’s two-stage community assessment provides a temporal comparison, but the available summary leaves open other explanations for the observed associations, including factors not examined in the report.

The magnitude and practical importance of the effects also cannot be judged from the summary alone. The results therefore offer a nuanced picture: personality traits and social support were related to reported estrangement, with different patterns of direct and indirect association, while the observational evidence stops short of showing that any one factor determined the outcome.

Subject of Research: Associations among Big Five personality traits, social support and interpersonal estrangement during the COVID-19 pandemic

Article Title: Interpersonal Estrangement in a Time of Crisis: Personality, Social Support, and Severed Ties during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Article References: Morstead, T., Rashidi, R., Sin, N. L., & DeLongis, A. (2026). Interpersonal Estrangement in a Time of Crisis: Personality, Social Support, and Severed Ties during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Current Psychology, 45(21), Article 1641. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-026-10232-3

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s12144-026-10232-3

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic, interpersonal estrangement, social support, Big Five personality, openness, extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, community sample, follow-up survey, Interpersonal, Estrangement