828 vIII. EMERGING  ISSuES AND  NEW  DIRECTIONS
to each factor. For some people, proximity 
to work and local shops is very important, 
whereas other people prefer a long com -
mute if it means having a large house and 
back yard. What might account for the 
variance in place preferences? Demograph -
ics certainly explain some of it, but there is 
also evidence that personality accounts for 
a significant proportion, too. For instance, 
individual differences in agreeableness are 
related to desires to move to places regarded 
as friendly and welcoming, differences in 
neuroticism are related to desires to move 
to safe and friendly areas, and differences 
in openness are related to desires to move 
closer to work (Jokela, 2014b).
Personality also appears to be associated 
with preferences for particular types of en -
vironments. Results from small and large-
scale studies suggest that preferences for 
mountainous environments are greater for 
people low in extraversion, because such 
environments foster feelings of solitude and 
reflection, and that preferences for beaches 
are greater among people high in extraver -
sion, because such environments encourage 
affiliation and social interaction. The expla -
nation for these findings is that individuals 
are drawn to environments that satisfy their 
psychological needs (Oishi, Talhelm, & Lee, 
2015). There is also evidence that people 
who have settled in frontier regions, which 
are rugged, undeveloped, and have limited 
social order, possess a greater sense of free -
dom, independence, autonomy, and novelty 
seeking compared to residents of more devel -
oped regions (Kitayama, Ishii, Imada, Take -
mura, & Ramaswamy, 2006).
Personality is not only related to prefer -
ences for particular place characteristics, it 
is also linked to residential mobility. Results 
from a few longitudinal cohort studies in -
dicate that people high in openness and ex -
traversion are more likely to move to urban 
and cosmopolitan areas compared to people 
low on those traits (Camperio Ciani et al., 
2007; Jokela, 2009, 2014a; Jokela et al., 
2008; Murray et al., 2005). The explanation 
is that people high in openness and extraver -
sion are drawn to large cities, because they 
are vibrant and culturally diverse, which sat -
isfies their needs for intellectual and social 
stimulation (Jokela et al., 2008; Murray et 
al., 2005). There is also evidence that people high in agreeableness are likely to settle near 
extended family and remain in their home -
town, presumably because people high on 
this trait place considerable importance on 
personal relationships (Boneva et al., 1998; 
Jokela, 2009). Fitting in with others is an -
other important factor that contributes to 
residential mobility. For instance, Motyl, 
Iyer, Oishi, Trawalter, and Nosek (2014) 
investigated the consequences of ideologi -
cal fit within regional contexts and ob -
served that people who live in areas where 
their social and political values are shared 
by their neighbors report greater feelings of 
belonging, place satisfaction, and desires to 
stay in the area, whereas people who do not 
share the values of their neighbors are more 
likely to want to move and to actually move 
to another location. Taken together, there is 
considerable evidence that personality traits 
and other psychological characteristics are 
linked to people’s decisions about whether 
to move and where to settle. However, more 
attention needs to be given to the factors 
that affect whether or not people do move 
and what happens next.
Summary
Social influence (e.g., social institutions, 
cultural norms), ecological influence (e.g., 
climate, pathogen prevalence), and selective 
migration (e.g., residential mobility, place 
preferences) are three mechanisms hypoth -
esized to contribute to geographical varia -
tion in personality. There is limited direct 
evidence that conclusively shows the impact 
that each mechanism has on geographi -
cal differences, but the wealth of indirect 
evidence makes it reasonable to suppose 
that all three mechanisms are important. 
Furthermore, with limited direct empirical 
evidence, it is not possible to evaluate the 
relative impact that each mechanism has on 
geographical personality variation. How -
ever, it is likely that the mechanisms do not 
work independently but in combination, and 
that the relative role of each mechanism var -
ies across traits.
One example of how all three mechanisms 
collectively contribute to geographical vari -
ation in personality comes from research 
on frontier regions. Kitayama and col -
leagues (2006) investigated the hypothesis 