Are you tough? Self-reliant? It may be because of where you live, study finds
The landscape of the region where you live might determine what your personality is like, a new study says.
The mountains in the western United States were once “inhospitable” lands, shaping the personalities of those who chose to journey into such terrain and call it home. This, researchers say, has influenced the personalities of those living there today, with people in higher altitudes and elevations resembling the first pioneers’ “coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and acquisitiveness,” according to a news release on the study published Monday in the journal Nature Human Behavior.
The measured personality differences also held true when compared to the more “agreeable and outgoing” people living on the East Coast, the researchers said.
“The harsh and remote environment of mountainous frontier regions historically attracted nonconformist settlers strongly motivated by a sense of freedom,” study lead author Friedrich Götz from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Psychology in the United Kingdom reported in a release.
“Such rugged terrain likely favoured those who closely guarded their resources and distrusted strangers, as well as those who engaged in risky explorations to secure food and territory. These traits may have distilled over time into an individualism characterised by toughness and self-reliance that lies at the heart of the American frontier ethos.”
The team of international researchers studied the links between anonymous, online personality test results from over 3.3 million Americans and the topography of about 37,000 U.S. ZIP codes. The test was based on the “Big Five” model that offers scores on five “fundamental” personality traits including extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness and neuroticism.
Americans living in mountainous regions had low levels of agreeableness, “suggesting [they] are less trusting and forgiving — traits that benefit territorial, self-focused survival strategies,” the researchers said. High elevation residents also had low levels of extraversion and conscientiousness, which “reflects the introverted self-reliance” sometimes needed to live in secluded areas and the “rebelliousness” when it comes to rules.
While neuroticism was lower among mountain dwellers, “suggesting an emotional stability,” openness to experience was much higher and “the most pronounced personality trait,” according to the study.
“Openness is a strong predictor of residential mobility,” Götz said. “A willingness to move your life in pursuit of goals such as economic affluence and personal freedom drove many original North American frontier settlers.”
What’s more, this openness was 10 times stronger in the western residents than eastern ones who took the personality test, according to the study.
And for those who were born and raised in the mountains but then moved away, the same personality trends remained, meaning the sociocultural effects — attitudes and education of the “former Wild West” — play a more powerful role in shaping people’s personalities.
“Small effects can make a big difference at scale. An increase of one standard deviation in mountainousness is associated with a change of around 1% in personality,” Götz said in the release. “Over hundreds of thousands of people, such an increase would translate into highly consequential political, economic, social and health outcomes.”
This story was originally published September 9, 2020 at 12:06 PM with the headline "Are you tough? Self-reliant? It may be because of where you live, study finds."
