Physical topography is associated with human personality

Götz, Friedrich M.; Stieger, Stefan; Gosling, Samuel D.; Potter, Jeff; Rentfrow, Peter J.

doi:10.1038/s41562-020-0930-x

Cited by 58 publications

(72 citation statements)

References 87 publications

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“…Soto, 2019). Thus, even comparatively removed predictors such as climate (Fischer et al, 2018;Van de Vliert & Van Lange, 2019;Wei et al, 2017) or physical topography (Götz, Stieger, Gosling, Rentfrow, & Potter, 2020) that may have only a small effect on personality may ultimately be quite consequential.…”

Section: The Importance and Consequence Of Small Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Small Effects: The Indispensable Foundation for a Cumulative Psychological Science

Götz

Gosling

Rentfrow

2021

Perspect Psychol Sci

Self Cite

305

190

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We draw on genetics research to argue that complex psychological phenomena are most likely determined by a multitude of causes and that any individual cause is likely to have only a small effect. Building on this, we highlight the dangers of a publication culture that continues to demand large effects. First, it rewards inflated effects that are unlikely to be real and encourages practices likely to yield such effects. Second, it overlooks the small effects that are most likely to be real, hindering attempts to identify and understand the actual determinants of complex psychological phenomena. We then explain the theoretical and practical relevance of small effects, which can have substantial consequences, especially when considered at scale and over time. Finally, we suggest ways in which scholars can harness these insights to advance research and practices in psychology (i.e., leveraging the power of big data, machine learning, and crowdsourcing science; promoting rigorous preregistration, including prespecifying the smallest effect size of interest; contextualizing effects; changing cultural norms to reward accurate and meaningful effects rather than exaggerated and unreliable effects). Only once small effects are accepted as the norm, rather than the exception, can a reliable and reproducible cumulative psychological science be built.

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Section: The Importance and Consequence Of Small Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Small Effects: The Indispensable Foundation for a Cumulative Psychological Science

Götz

Gosling

Rentfrow

2021

Perspect Psychol Sci

Self Cite

305

190

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“…Across the 199 cities included in our study, an increase of 50 USD in a city's housing costs was associated with a positive change in city-level Openness of .17 standard deviations (relative to other cities) during the following year (see Figure 2). This is noteworthy in and of itself (Funder & Ozer, 2019), as local cultural Openness is a complex phenomenon that is likely to be determined by a multitude of diverse causes, with each individual cause in turn being likely to yield only a small effect (Götz, Gosling, & Rentfrow, 2020). The practical relevance of this finding becomes even more apparent when considering the crucial macro-level outcomes that are robustly associated with local cultural Openness.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Local Housing Market Dynamics Predict Rapid Shifts in Cultural Openness: A Nine-Year Study across 199 Cities

Fm¹,

Ebert²,

Gosling³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Accumulating evidence suggests that culture changes in response to shifting socioecological conditions; economic development is a particularly potent driver of such change. Previous re-search has shown that economic development can induce slow but steady cultural changes within large cultural entities (e.g., countries). Here we propose that economically driven culture change can occur rapidly, particularly in smaller cultural entities (e.g., cites). Drawing on work in cultural dynamics, urban economics, and geographical psychology, we hypothesize that changes in local housing prices – reflecting changing availability of local amenities – can induce rapid shifts in local cultures of Openness. We propose two mechanisms that might underlie such cultural shifts: selective migration (i.e., people selectively moving to cities that offer certain amenities) and social acculturation (i.e., people adapting to changing amenities in their city). Based on trait Openness scores of 1,946,752 U.S. residents, we track annual changes in local Openness across 199 cities for nine years (2006-2014). We link these data to annual infor-mation on local housing markets, an established proxy for local amenities. To test interdepend-encies between the time series of local housing markets and Openness, we use Panel Vector Autoregression modelling. In line with our hypothesis, we find robust evidence that rising housing costs predict positive shifts in local Openness but not vice versa. Additional analyses leveraging participants’ duration of residence in their city suggest that both selective migration and social acculturation contribute to shifts in local Openness. Our study thus offers a new window onto the rapid changes of cultures at local levels.

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“…Moreover, when relating people’s affective and overall experience in space, the current methods often rely on the participants’ position during the response time (e.g. linking self-reports and GPS coordinates/zip codes 38 , 52 ) or semantic reports 4 , 5 . However, mobility across the geography and how we relate to our territory are complex dynamics that might be difficult to measure with such methods.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emotional representations of space vary as a function of peoples’ affect and interoceptive sensibility

Galvez-Pol

Nadal

Kilner

2021

Sci Rep

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Most research on people’s representation of space has focused on spatial appraisal and navigation. But there is more to space besides navigation and assessment: people have different emotional experiences at different places, which create emotionally tinged representations of space. Little is known about the emotional representation of space and the factors that shape it. The purpose of this study was to develop a graphic methodology to study the emotional representation of space and some of the environmental features (non-natural vs. natural) and personal features (affective state and interoceptive sensibility) that modulate it. We gave participants blank maps of the region where they lived and asked them to apply shade where they had happy/sad memories, and where they wanted to go after Covid-19 lockdown. Participants also completed self-reports on affective state and interoceptive sensibility. By adapting methods for analyzing neuroimaging data, we examined shaded pixels to quantify where and how strong emotions are represented in space. The results revealed that happy memories were consistently associated with similar spatial locations. Yet, this mapping response varied as a function of participants’ affective state and interoceptive sensibility. Certain regions were associated with happier memories in participants whose affective state was more positive and interoceptive sensibility was higher. The maps of happy memories, desired locations to visit after lockdown, and regions where participants recalled happier memories as a function of positive affect and interoceptive sensibility overlayed significantly with natural environments. These results suggest that people’s emotional representations of their environment are shaped by the naturalness of places, and by their affective state and interoceptive sensibility.

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Physical topography is associated with human personality

Cited by 58 publications

References 87 publications

Small Effects: The Indispensable Foundation for a Cumulative Psychological Science

Small Effects: The Indispensable Foundation for a Cumulative Psychological Science

Local Housing Market Dynamics Predict Rapid Shifts in Cultural Openness: A Nine-Year Study across 199 Cities

Emotional representations of space vary as a function of peoples’ affect and interoceptive sensibility

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