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Researchers map
personality traits by region
(August/September
2008 Issue)
By Ami Albernaz
Many of us have them - friends on the West Coast who look disdainfully
down their noses on their Atlantic counterparts, saying we're too
hurried and uptight. Researchers recently lent some credence to
this idea. Mapping the salient personality traits in different regions
in the United States, the team found hubs of neuroticism in the
Northeast.
That neuroticism thrives in this region would not surprise anyone
who's spent time on some of its college campuses or has seen a few
Woody Allen movies. Findings for other parts of the country were
also unsurprising, in light of their most common occupations: The
South, where much of the German and Japanese car manufacturing is
concentrated, is filled with agreeable and conscientious people
who work well in teams; Chicago, a hub for sales professionals,
ranks high in extroversion; New York, Boston, San Francisco and
Seattle, cities flush with artists, entertainers, and scientists,
are characterized as "open to experience." The research team, led
by Richard Florida, Ph.D., an urban studies theorist at the University
of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, used data from personality
inventories taken by more than 600,000 respondents across the country.
Why the Northeast should rank high in neuroticism and openness
to experience is unclear, though clues can be found in some of the
region's other characteristics, says P. Jason Rentfrow, Ph.D.,
a psychologist at the University of Cambridge in England who worked
on the study. In places where neuroticism is high, people tend to
keep to themselves, spending less time with friends and having guests
over for dinner less often. These places are also more crowded and
have higher rates of violent crime, Rentfrow says. Places ranking
high in openness-to-experience, meanwhile, are also marked by relatively
little social involvement, as well as a liberal political orientation.
"Without a doubt, there are several factors at play here, and I
suspect it'll be a while before we figure out how they all interact,"
Rentfrow says. "For now, we're theorizing that the regional personality
differences come about by way of migration patterns and social influence."
Maya Tamir, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology at Boston
College, says neuroticism and openness-to-experience both characterize
New England's college campuses. "We already know that academics
are high in neuroticism and open to experience," she says. "There's
a huge amount of students first and foremost. You would expect them
to be higher in open to experience and higher in neuroticism. Also,
the types of jobs that are offered here and the types of cultural
events here correlate with openness-to-experience and neuroticism."
What's more, people - particularly those who are open to new experiences
- might seek out environments that "allow them to be who they are,"
Tamir adds. In a May article in The Boston Globe, Florida pointed
out that open-to-experience types tend to move to places with likeminded
people, while agreeable and conscientious people tend to stay -
thereby reinforcing "psychogeographic" patterns.
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