The impact of family violence incidents on personality changes: An examination of social media users' messages in China

Changes in personality tend to be intertwined with life events (e.g., family violence [FV]). This study aimed to examine the personality changes before and after an FV incident using Weibo data. Samples were selected from 1.16 million Weibo users in China who had posted their own FV experience as victims. We used Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) to extract the linguistic features of these unstructured texts as the scores of participants' personality. We built prediction models to measure and compare personality differences between the victim group and control group in Sample 1; and personality changes between the victim group and control group before and after an FV incident in Sample 2. Results showed that the victims' neuroticism increased and conscientiousness decreased after experiencing FV. At the same time, their agreeableness and openness levels were lower than those of the control group. Implications and limitations are also discussed.