̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Friedrich Götz

Gentrification changes the personality make-up of cities in just a few years

fpjl2 — Thu, 16 Dec 2021 10:15:40 +0000

Rising house prices may change the personality make-up of US cities within a few years, with residents becoming increasingly open-minded – not just as wealthier people move in, but also among longer-term locals.

This is according to a ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge-led study of almost two million people in the US living across 199 cities. Psychologists tracked annual personality scores over nine years (2006 to 2014) and compared the data to local housing markets.

̽��ֱ��researchers found that just a $50 rise in a city’s average housing prices saw the characteristic of 'openness' increase significantly* among residents (relative to other US cities). Openness is one of five major personality traits, and captures levels of curiosity and creativity.

Changes in housing prices were associated with shifts in ‘Openness’ in US cities where the trait was already very high compared to the rest of the country, such as New York and Chicago.

Even in San Francisco, long famous for its open-minded residents, citywide levels of ‘Openness’ rose sharply over the nine-year period as average housing costs jumped by almost $200.

Previous research has shown that house prices largely reflect the prevalence of 'social amenities': from restaurants to theatres, sports venues, green spaces and well-performing schools.

̽��ֱ��study’s authors point out that such amenities appeal to open-minded people, and argue that greater access to these facilities helps to drive “local cultures of openness”.

“Theorists going back to Karl Marx have argued that economic development drives national shifts in personality and culture,” said Dr Friedrich Götz, lead author of the study now published in the journal American Psychologist. (Pre-print available here: https://psyarxiv.com/7wt89/)

“We can now see how rapidly those changes occur in smaller and more nimble communities such as cities, where major cultural shifts can be experienced in just a few short years, rather than decades or centuries,” he said.

̽��ֱ��trait of ‘Openness’ is strongly associated with liberal votes and attitudes as well as entrepreneurial activity. It is also linked to socioeconomic status: the desire and freedom to explore new experiences can be a side effect of sufficient wealth and security.

Data modelling was used to discount socio-economic status at an individual level by incorporating education and self-reported 'social class' into calculations. ̽��ֱ��team also separated out the cities from overall national and state-level trends for ‘Openness’.

̽��ֱ��psychologists then investigated two main ways that house prices and associated amenities are linked to personality shifts within urban populations.

'Selective migration' is when certain types of people move to cities or neighbourhoods, having been attracted by the local culture. 'Social acculturation' refers to changes in individual personalities, in this case through exposure to greater opportunities – from arts scenes to diverse cuisines – and more open-minded neighbours.

Researchers attempted to disentangle these effects by separating out the data into 'established populations' – those who lived in a city prior to 2006, the earliest year in the study – and 'newcomer populations': those who relocated between 2006 and 2014.

̽��ֱ��study showed both factors at play: rising housing costs predicted a significant increase in ‘Openness’ among both established and newcomer populations in cities right across the US.

“Substantial personality shifts within cities can and do occur within a couple of years,” said Dr Jason Rentfrow, the study’s senior author from Cambridge’s Department of Psychology and fellow of Fitzwilliam College.

“Cities are magnets for certain types of people, even as they become increasingly unaffordable – particularly for young people. These cultural changes may go on to affect the personality of long-term residents.”

“Research has shown that openness is related to economic resilience, creative capital and innovation, as well as liberal politics and arts,” said co-author Tobias Ebert. “ ̽��ֱ��geographical clustering of personality reinforces existing social and economic differences across the country. We can see this reflected in contemporary political divisions.”

̽��ֱ��study author’s point to US cities such as Pittsburgh: once home to blue-collar industry, it was devastated by the manufacturing collapse in the 1970s, yet by the mid-1980s had become a hub for medicine and higher education – leading to rising housing costs and a cultural transformation that continues to attract the young and open-minded.

̽��ֱ��researchers analysed all major personality traits, such as neuroticism and extroversion, as part of the study – but only openness was connected to housing costs. Importantly, the price of housing appears to drive local culture, but not vice versa: increases in openness did not predict more expensive housing.

Notes:

*An annual $50 increase in overall city-wide housing costs saw a city’s level of ‘openness’ rise by a .17 of standard deviation in the following year relative to other cities.
̽��ֱ��1,946,752 survey participants were all aged between 15 and 70, and provided a valid postal code. ̽��ֱ��data for housing costs incorporated changes in both homeowner costs and the total rent paid by tenants.
Dr Friedrich Götz worked on the study while completing his PhD at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. He has since taken up a position at the ̽��ֱ�� of British Columbia.

Massive study of almost two million US residents reveals rising housing costs may drive increases in “openness” of character among both long-term and new inhabitants of a city.

Substantial personality shifts within cities can and do occur within a couple of years

Jason Rentfrow

Mercedes Álvarez via Unsplash

Mural in the SoHo district of New York, one of the US cities featured in the study.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Lockdown or not, personality predicts your likelihood of staying home during the pandemic

jg533 — Thu, 15 Oct 2020 13:48:25 +0000

A team of psychology researchers from Cambridge, Columbia and Harvard Universities surveyed over 101,000 people in 55 countries to find out whether they were staying at home because of coronavirus between late March and early April 2020. ̽��ֱ��results are published today in the journal American Psychologist.

̽��ֱ��researchers found that extroverts are least likely to follow official guidance to stay at home. ̽��ֱ��team suggest that tailoring public health messages towards the more extroverted in society could encourage greater overall compliance in populations and help prevent the spread of coronavirus.

“Extroverts are gregarious and sociable, and they found it especially hard to stay cooped up at home and not see other people. They were most likely to break lockdown rules, and stayed at home less than people of any other personality type during March and April,” said Friedrich Götz, a PhD researcher in the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Psychology, and first author of the report.

Late March and early April 2020 coincided with the early, accelerating stage of the COVID-19 pandemic. This was also when government policies on staying at home varied between countries and were changing rapidly over time. Halting the spread of coronavirus relied on people following official guidance.

̽��ֱ��survey explored the five key traits commonly used by psychologists to characterise personality: agreeableness, conscientiousness, extroversion, neuroticism, and openness. Agreeable people tend to be more compliant and trusting, and conscientious ones are diligent and law-abiding. People scoring highly for these personality traits tend to stay at home when advised to do so.

People who scored as highly neurotic, and those with very open-minded personalities decided to stay at home more even before lockdowns were put into place - they were already concerned about catching coronavirus. ̽��ֱ��researchers think that as restrictions on movements lift, these groups are more likely to maintain social distancing than other personality types.

“Highly neurotic people had decided early on that this virus wasn’t something to mess with, and they were staying at home,” said Götz.

“Open-minded people tend to be very well-connected and interested in the wider world, so we think they realised the potential impact of coronavirus earlier than others and acted accordingly,” added Andrés Gvirtz, a PhD researcher in Cambridge’s Department of Psychology and second author of the study.

He added: “Watching TV reports of the COVID-19 situation in Italy for instance, which was ahead of the UK in terms of the impact of the virus, was informing the behaviour of open-minded people at the beginning of the pandemic.”

As governments tightened lockdown rules in late March and early April, a greater number of people started following them, regardless of their personality. ̽��ֱ��study recorded high compliance by this time, with over 80% of people surveyed across the world reporting they were staying at home.

Survey participants’ personalities were scored on the ‘strength’ of each of the five key personality traits on a seven point scale. A single point change in a person’s tendency towards any of the five traits was found to alter their likelihood of staying at home by around 1%. ̽��ֱ��researchers stress that even this small percentage has important consequences, given the global scale of the pandemic and the contagiousness of coronavirus.

̽��ֱ��researchers suggest that public health messages could be tailored towards extroverts, to encourage greater compliance with lockdown rules in the population as a whole. They suggest that such messages could try to convey an understanding of how hard it is to stay at home - particularly for people who really enjoy being with their friends and family - and point out that the guidance is in place to protect those people.

“Government regulations do very much influence the behaviour of the population at large,” said Götz, “but we need to recognise that not all of the people will follow all of the rules. Extroverts pose a particular challenge during the pandemic, because they are least likely to stay at home when governments advise it.”

Governments around the world have tried to prevent the spread of coronavirus by encouraging or enforcing social distancing behaviours, with periods of lockdown in which people are asked not to leave home except for specific purposes.

This research was funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (part of UK Research and Innovation), the Cambridge Trust and Peterhouse Cambridge.

Reference
Götz, F.M. et al: ‘How Personality and Policy Predict Pandemic Behaviour: Understanding Sheltering-in-Place in 55 Countries at the Onset of COVID-19.’ American Psychologist, 2020. DOI: 10.1037/amp0000740

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Despite more of the population staying at home as government policies on COVID-19 become stricter, a study has found that a person’s personality influences how likely they are to stay at home during the pandemic - and cannot be entirely overridden.

Extroverts...were most likely to break lockdown rules, and stayed at home less than people of any other personality type during March and April

Friedrich Götz

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‘Wild West’ mentality lingers in US mountain regions

fpjl2 — Mon, 07 Sep 2020 15:01:29 +0000

When historian Frederick Jackson Turner presented his famous thesis on the US frontier in 1893, he described the “coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and acquisitiveness” it had forged in the American character.

Now, well into the 21st century, and researchers led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge have detected remnants of the pioneer personality in US populations of once inhospitable mountainous territory, particularly in the West.

A team of scientists algorithmically investigated how landscape shapes psychology. They analysed links between the anonymised results of an online personality test completed by over 3.3 million Americans, and the “topography” of 37,227 US postal – or ZIP – codes.

̽��ֱ��researchers found that living at both a higher altitude and an elevation relative to the surrounding region – indicating “hilliness” – is associated with a distinct blend of personality traits that fits with “frontier settlement theory”.

“ ̽��ֱ��harsh and remote environment of mountainous frontier regions historically attracted nonconformist settlers strongly motivated by a sense of freedom,” said researcher Friedrich Götz, from Cambridge’s Department of Psychology.

“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” said Götz, lead author of the study.

“When we look at personality across the whole United States, we find that mountainous residents are more likely to have psychological characteristics indicative of this frontier mentality.”

Götz worked with colleagues from the Karl Landsteiner ̽��ֱ�� of Health Sciences, Austria, the ̽��ֱ�� of Texas, US, the ̽��ֱ�� of Melbourne in Australia, and his Cambridge supervisor Dr Jason Rentfrow. ̽��ֱ��findings are published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.

̽��ֱ��research uses the “Big Five” personality model, standard in social psychology, with simple online tests providing high-to-low scores for five fundamental personality traits of millions of Americans.

̽��ֱ��mix of characteristics uncovered by study’s authors consists of low levels of “agreeableness”, suggesting mountainous residents are less trusting and forgiving – traits that benefit “territorial, self-focused survival strategies”.

Low levels of “extraversion” reflect the introverted self-reliance required to thrive in secluded areas, and a low level of “conscientiousness” lends itself to rebelliousness and indifference to rules, say researchers.

“Neuroticism” is also lower, suggesting an emotional stability and assertiveness suited to frontier living. However, “openness to experience” is much higher, and the most pronounced personality trait in mountain dwellers.

“Openness is a strong predictor of residential mobility,” said Götz. “A willingness to move your life in pursuit of goals such as economic affluence and personal freedom drove many original North American frontier settlers.”

“Taken together, this psychological fingerprint for mountainous areas may be an echo of the personality types that sought new lives in unknown territories.”

̽��ֱ��researchers wanted to distinguish between the direct effects of physical environment and the “sociocultural influence” of growing up where frontier values and identities still hold sway.

To do this, they looked at whether mountainous personality patterns applied to people born and raised in these regions that had since moved away.

̽��ֱ��findings suggest some “initial enculturation” say researchers, as those who left their early mountain home are still consistently less agreeable, conscientious and extravert, although no such effects were observed for neuroticism and openness.

̽��ֱ��scientists also divided the country at the edge of St. Louis – “gateway to the West” – to see if there is a personality difference between those in mountains that made up the historic frontier, such as the Rockies, and eastern ranges such as the Appalachians.

While mountains continue to be a “meaningful predictor” of personality type on both sides of this divide, key differences emerged. Those in the east are more agreeable and outgoing, while western ranges are a closer fit for frontier settlement theory.

In fact, the mountainous effect on high levels of “openness to experience” is ten times as strong in residents of the old western frontier as in those of the eastern ranges.

̽��ֱ��findings suggest that, while ecological effects are important, it is the lingering sociocultural effects – the stories, attitudes and education – in the former “Wild West” that are most powerful in shaping mountainous personality, according to scientists.

They describe the effect of mountain areas on personality as “small but robust”, but argue that complex psychological phenomena are influenced by many hundreds of factors, so small effects are to be expected.

“Small effects can make a big difference at scale,” said Götz. “An increase of one standard deviation in mountainousness is associated with a change of around 1% in personality.”

“Over hundreds of thousands of people, such an increase would translate into highly consequential political, economic, social and health outcomes.”

Distinct psychological mix associated with mountain populations is consistent with the theory that harsh frontiers attracted certain personalities.

This psychological fingerprint for mountainous areas may be an echo of the personality types that sought new lives in unknown territories

Friedrich Götz

Todd Diemer

Man in a cowboy hat atop Humphreys Peak in Arizona, US

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