Perceptions of psychedelic personality change, determinants of use, setting and drug moderation: Toward a holistic model

Over the past two decades, research has suggested that psychedelic compounds can produce lasting changes in mental health, personality and philosophical beliefs, but findings have been mixed and fragmented across different measurement approaches. Previous studies have often relied on pre-selected quantitative scales or small qualitative samples focused on specific clinical outcomes, leaving no unified model that captures the diverse ways people report changes in the self following psychedelic experiences. The authors propose that an important preliminary step toward a holistic model is to collect unconstrained, open-ended accounts of perceived personality change from a broad sample, thereby mapping the variety of trait-level changes people attribute to psychedelics without imposing a priori categories. This study therefore set out to (1) document the range of perceived dispositional changes people report after their most intense psychedelic experience, (2) characterise the latent structure among these change themes and examine whether setting and drug type moderate different kinds of perceived change, and (3) assess whether baseline personality traits predispose people to seek or use psychedelics. The investigators treated the project as hypothesis-generating: they sought to produce a bottom-up taxonomy that could inform future prospective and experimental tests of actual personality change and guide measurement and therapeutic applications.

Participants were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk between March and October 2018. Initial screening (N = 557) assigned respondents to one of three paid surveys depending on prior psychedelic use and interest: (1) prior psychedelic users, (2) non-users with no interest in future use, and (3) non-users who expressed interest in trying psychedelics. Participants received US$0.25 for the screener and US$2.00 for the main survey. After exclusions for invalid or inconsistent responding and incomplete open-ended data, final samples were: users N = 218, interested non-users N = 104, and uninterested non-users N = 104. The study was approved by the University of Georgia IRB. All participants completed IPIP-NEO measures of the Five-Factor Model (FFM) and the Big Five Aspects Scale (BFAS) aspects for Openness and Intellect. Validity checks used two 8-item scales from the Elemental Psychopathy Assessment. Within the user sample, open-ended questions asked participants to describe the setting of their most intense psychedelic experience and to provide free-text accounts of how that experience influenced their life and personality; data were available for 202 users. Two raters coded presence/absence of 11 setting categories (e.g., nature, alone, festival), with disagreements resolved by the first author; inter-rater reliability varied by setting but was >0.70 for nine of eleven codes. Thematic analysis was performed on users' open-ended responses to derive discrete change themes (binary-coded per participant). Fifty-two themes were identified. Exploratory factor analysis (principal axis factoring with oblimin rotation) was used to derive higher-order structure from those themes; participants who denied any change were excluded from the factor analyses. Analytical steps for selecting factor number included Parallel Analysis, MAP, and inspection of scree plots; an eight-factor solution was chosen, explaining 31% of variance. Correlational analyses related themes to settings and to reported drug type. For personality determinants, mean-level comparisons of FFM and BFAS scores were conducted across the three groups using regression models with age as a covariate, and correlations between personality and interest in psychedelic use were calculated. Hypothesised analyses used p < 0.05, while multiple comparisons for other tests used a Bonferroni-adjusted threshold of p < 0.002. Several supplementary, unadjusted analyses were also reported.

From 202 users' open-ended responses, thematic analysis produced 52 distinct change themes. Exploratory factor analysis of those themes (excluding respondents who reported no change) yielded eight higher-order factors that together explained 31% of theme variance: Unitive Spiritual, Gratitude Absorption, Purpose Freedom, Compassion Understanding, Emotional Stability, Openness Perspective, Connection to Self, and Neuroticism Caution. Only themes with factor loadings λ > 0.30 were assigned to factors. The number of unique participants endorsing at least one theme per factor ranged from N = 28 (Neuroticism Caution, 14% of coded responses) to N = 120 (Emotional Stability, 59% of coded responses); descriptive frequencies for individual themes varied across factors. Unitive Spiritual included themes such as Connection to the world, Mystical and Spiritual content, and Letting go of small concerns; 39% of coded responses endorsed at least one theme from this factor. Gratitude Absorption comprised Savor beauty, Gratitude appreciation and Nature-relatedness and was endorsed by 45% of coded responses; authors noted conceptual overlap with trait absorption and heightened present-centred awareness. Purpose Freedom captured Author, Authenticity, Nonconformity, Goals/purpose and Freedom themes and was reported by 22% of coded responses. Compassion Understanding grouped Reduced reactivity/anger, Reduced judgement, Compassion/empathy and Related interpersonal themes; 46% of coded responses included one or more of these themes. Emotional Stability (including Peace/calm, Mental health, Resilience) was the most frequently endorsed factor (59% of coded responses). Openness Perspective contained Open-mindedness, New perspective and epistemic themes and was reported by 49% of coded responses. Connection to Self (Introspective, Connected to self, intellectual/philosophical reflection) and Neuroticism Caution (Cautiousness, Introversion, Neuroticism/anxiety/depression, Closed to psychedelics) were smaller factors, with 21% and 14% of coded responses respectively. Regarding the prevalence of perceived change, 30% of participants explicitly denied post-acute changes in personality; among those endorsing change, 11% described changes as relatively short-lived (authors note that duration was not systematically assessed). The Neuroticism Caution factor captured adverse outcomes for a minority of respondents, including accounts of prolonged anxiety, social withdrawal and in rare cases descriptions of psychotic episodes. Associations between setting and perceived change showed that nature settings correlated with the largest number of positive themes: Connection to the world (r = 0.29), Introspective (r = 0.27), Humans insignificant (r = 0.24), Happiness/positivity/enthusiasm (r = 0.22) and Nature-relatedness (r = 0.20). Being alone during the experience correlated with Hope (r = 0.32), Reappraisal (r = 0.23) and Mental health (r = 0.22). Using another person's home was negatively associated with Reduced judgement (r = -0.20), and special-occasion settings correlated with Shamanic themes (r = 0.27). The authors note that many of these correlations were interpreted by effect-size rather than formal inferential testing. When comparing drugs, psilocybin-related experiences were associated more frequently than LSD with a majority (70%) of the 53 themes examined. Psilocybin had more than double the reports (relative to LSD) for themes including Reappraisal, Goals/purpose, Reduced reactivity/anger, Creativity, Self-trust/acceptance, Emotional stability, Connection to the world, Touchstone experience, and reported Psychosis among others. Conversely, LSD was associated with more reports of Conscientiousness, Hope, Humans as insignificant, Vigor, Cautiousness, Connected to self and Freedom. Settings varied by drug: music-listening and festival/concert settings were reported more often for LSD, while nature, romantic-partner and alone settings were reported more often for psilocybin. Personality differences between subsamples showed that users were significantly lower in Neuroticism and higher in Extraversion than interested non-users; users were higher in Openness (IPIP-NEO) than uninterested non-users and higher in BFAS Intellect than both non-user groups. Interested non-users were higher in Openness than uninterested non-users. In the combined non-user samples, interest in psychedelic use correlated with Openness (r = 0.30, p < 0.001), BFAS Openness (r = 0.20, p = 0.004) and Neuroticism (r = 0.28, p < 0.001). In the user sample, retrospective interest showed a small correlation with Openness (r = 0.19) that did not meet the Bonferroni-adjusted threshold.

Weiss and colleagues interpret their findings as a preliminary, bottom-up model of perceived psychedelic-mediated personality change that both converges with and extends the Five-Factor Model. The eight empirically derived factors reflected domains commonly reported in prior research—reduced negative affectivity and greater emotional stability, increased openness and cognitive exploration, enhanced compassion and interpersonal warmth—but also encompassed phenomenology that typical FFM scales may not capture well, such as metaphysical shifts, nature-related absorption and purpose-driven authenticity. The authors emphasise that these qualitative themes suggest candidate constructs for more comprehensive measurement of psychedelic-related change. The investigators highlight setting and drug type as potential moderators: natural settings were associated with a cluster of positive perceived outcomes (connectedness, introspection, nature-relatedness and wellbeing), and psilocybin was associated with more frequent reports of certain positive themes relative to LSD. They note several plausible explanations for drug differences, including pharmacodynamics, pre-existing differences among users, and differing setting preferences; their data provided partial support for setting differences mediating drug-related outcome variation because psilocybin users more often reported nature settings. Authors caution that adverse responses, while less common than benefits, were present and sometimes severe for an important minority: the Neuroticism Caution factor captured reports of lasting anxiety, withdrawal and rare psychotic-like episodes. They situate these findings alongside larger surveys and controlled laboratory data, noting that controlled administration studies report markedly lower incidences of sustained post-acute symptoms, which underscores the potential protective role of screening, preparation and supportive settings. Key limitations acknowledged by the authors include reliance on retrospective self-report (so the study measures perceived rather than objectively documented change), potential motivated recall despite MTurk recruitment mitigations, inability of open-ended coding to quantify magnitude or prevalence of each theme per participant, relatively modest sample sizes for some subgroup comparisons, lack of measures of other drug use to test specificity to psychedelics, and absence of peer-report corroboration. The authors therefore frame the work as hypothesis-generating: the taxonomy and factor structure should guide future prospective, placebo-controlled and peer-report studies, and support development of broader measurement instruments and tailored therapeutic approaches.

The authors conclude that their qualitative-first approach yields a preliminary holistic model linking personality-based determinants of psychedelic use, the types of self- and personality-related changes people attribute to psychedelic experiences, and how setting and drug type may moderate those changes. They emphasise that because this study assessed perceived changes retrospectively, its principal value lies in generating testable hypotheses for future prospective and experimental research and in informing more comprehensive measurement and therapeutic strategies. The authors suggest that validated scales derived from these findings could help monitor domains of self-functioning relevant to recreational and clinical psychedelic contexts and aid development of synergistic psychotherapeutic modalities tailored to specific change profiles.