Harvard Behavioral Scientist: Ask Yourself These 3 Questions Before Returning to ‘Normal’
The pandemic has changed how we work, where we live, and how we socialize. But not all the shifts wrought by the virus are external. It has also probably changed your personality, psychologists say.
These shifts are as unique as our individual pandemic experiences, so it’s not that everyone has suddenly become more or less social or conscientious thanks to a year in lockdown. Instead, experts suggest the pandemic has been an agent of something known as the Michelangelo effect.
The Michelangelo effect and the pandemic
The theory goes that, like the great Renaissance sculptor chipping away at a block of marble to reveal David underneath, stressful life events chip away at the poses, self-delusions, and convenient fictions that can build up around our true character and desires. Events like the pandemic force us to confront who we really are, and that often shifts our personalities and our goals.
No wonder the media is full of reports of people changing jobs or careers, uprooting themselves, and generally re-imaging their lives. Psychology is pretty clear that while the virus will hopefully recede, we’ll never go back entirely to the “normal” of before.
