Impact of social economic development on personality traits among Chinese college students: A cross-temporal meta-analysis, 2001–2016

Abstract

The past decades have witnessed the greatest economic growth and social transformation in China, which have brought about radical changes in society and people's life, which could influence their psychological aspects. In this study, we investigated birth cohort changes in the Big Five personality traits among Chinese college students during 2001–2016, and found a positive trend for multiple traits across years, namely, neuroticism, extraversion, openness, and conscientiousness, while agreeableness did not show obvious changes. In addition, the GDP growth rate of each province moderated the linear changes in personality traits with time, as we found that personality changes were more obvious in areas where GDP growth was relatively faster. Moreover, from the representational similarity perspective, there was significant similarity between the similarity pattern of the Big Five personality across years and the similarity of years, which was mediated by similarity in population growth.