Intersection of Big Five Personality Traits and Substance Use on X: Insight from the COVID-19 Pandemic

Published in Journal of Medical Internet Research 2025, 2025

Objective:

To evaluate whether the associations between the Big Five personality traits and SU discourse shifted during the 2019–2021 period, and to conduct a focused analysis of how these traits predict SU and relate to specific substance types, emotional expression, and demographic factors.

Methods:

We analyzed a corpus of several hundred million public posts from a major social media platform from 2019 to 2021. Using a pipeline of natural language processing and deep learning models, we identified SU-related posts and subsequently extracted scores for the Big Five personality traits, emotions, and user demographics. We employed trend analysis to compare annual shifts in trait-SU associations, while detailed 2020 data underwent rigorous modeling using logistic regression, correlation analysis, and topic modeling to elucidate the core relationships.

Citing this Article

Maharjan J, Jin R, Zhu J, Kenne D Intersection of Big Five Personality Traits and Substance Use on X: Insight from the COVID-19 Pandemic J Med Internet Res 2025;0:e0 URL: https://www.jmir.org/2025/0/e0/ doi: 10.2196/79454

Recommended citation: Maharjan J, Jin R, Zhu J, Kenne D, Intersection of Big Five Personality Traits and Substance Use on X: Insight from the COVID-19 Pandemic
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