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We do this using the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS), a large-scale panel survey representative of the UK population. The UKHLS allows us to assess the mental health of the same respondent before and during the COVID-19 period based on their \u201cBig Five\u201d personality traits and cognitive skills. We find that during the COVID-19 period, individuals who have more extravert and open personality traits report a higher mental health deterioration, while those scoring higher in agreeableness are less affected. The effect of openness is particularly strong: One more SD predicts up to 0.23 more symptoms of mental health deterioration in the 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) test during the COVID-19 period. In particular, for females, cognitive skills and openness are strong predictors of mental health deterioration, while for non-British White respondents, these predictors are extraversion and openness. Neuroticism strongly predicts worse mental health cross-sectionally, but it does not lead to significantly stronger deterioration during the pandemic. The study\u2019s results are robust to the inclusion of potential confounding variables such as changes in physical health, household income, and job status (like unemployed or furloughed).<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1073\/pnas.2109282118","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2021,9,14]],"date-time":"2021-09-14T14:02:01Z","timestamp":1631628121000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1073\/pnas.cm10313","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":60,"title":["COVID-19 and mental health of individuals with different personalities"],"prefix":"10.1073","volume":"118","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-7766-6503","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Eugenio","family":"Proto","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Economics Subject, Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, United Kingdom;"},{"name":"Center for Economic Policy Research, London EC1V 0DX, United Kingdom;"},{"name":"IZA\u2013Institute of Labor Economics, 53113 Bonn, Germany;"},{"name":"CESIfo (Center of Economic Studies and ifo Institute), 81679 Munich, Germany"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-3907-8396","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Anwen","family":"Zhang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Economics Subject, Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, United Kingdom;"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"341","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,9,10]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_3_5_1_2","unstructured":"J. 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