Peers Affect Personality

• Department of Economics

Ulf Zölitz, University of Zurich, will present the paper "Peers Affect Personality".

This paper establishes a causal link between the personality of peers and changes in one’s own personality. We conduct an experiment among 543 students who we randomly assign into study groups. We find that conscientious peers increase own conscientiousness, open peers increase openness to experience, and competitive peers increase own competitiveness. Peers’ extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism do not affect personality development. Peer-induced personality changes are consistent with theories of self-regulated personality development: students adopt traits that are valuable in the university context. Our results highlight how social interactions shape personality and underscore the malleability of personality in early adulthood.

Co-authored by Xiaoyue Shan.