The Role of Landscape in Variation in Regional Personality

Rebecca: I think geographical psychology has really advanced the field in a sense that it's made us think in a very systematic way about certain broad environmental factors like terrain, climate, GDP act as stresses and shape these variations in personality. We look at whether all sorts of landscapes ranging from seaside, hillside, mountains, urban areas and so on have distinct regional personalities. And for instance what we find is that agricultural areas have high levels of conscientiousness. On the other side we see that urban areas have higher levels of openness to experience. So yeah overall geographical psychology helps us really understand how the land or the landscape shapes our behaviours in turn how these behaviours over time shape personality.