 40. A Geographical Perspective on Personality Traits 825
ment of such links (Oishi & Graham, 2010; 
Rozin, 2003), whereas spatial arrangement 
is a primary focus of geographical psychol -
ogy (Rentfrow, 2014). More specifically, cul -
tural approaches typically treat location as a 
proxy for culture and interpret psychologi -
cal differences between locations as cultural 
differences, whereas geographical psychol -
ogy is concerned with the spatial clustering 
of psychological traits and how they relate 
to various cultural, societal, political, eco -
nomic, and population-  level factors. Thus, 
geographical psychology arguably offers a 
more thorough approach to understanding 
the nature of psychological differences be -
tween geographic regions.
What Is the Evidence for Geographical 
Variation in Personality?
The systematic study of geographical per -
sonality differences dates back over a half 
century. In the 1940s, psychologists and 
anthropologists began studying “national 
character” to understand the atrocities of 
World War II. But it was not for another 
50 years, with the establishment of the em -
pirically based Big Five framework, that 
interest in geographical personality differ -
ences began to attract considerable attention 
(Rentfrow et al., 2013). Initially, research fo -
cused on the universality of the five factors 
(e.g., McCrae & Costa, 1997; John, Chapter 
2, this volume), and with evidence suggest -
ing that the five factors provide a suitable 
framework for conceptualizing personality 
in many countries, attention began to focus 
on national personality differences. Com -
parisons of nation-  level mean personality 
scores have revealed systematic variability 
in each of the Big Five traits (Allik & Mc -
Crae, 2004; McCrae, 2001; McCrae, Ter -
racciano, & 79 Members of the Personality 
Profiles of Cultures Project, 2005; Schmitt, 
Allik, McCrae, & Benet-Martínez, 2007). 
Research on national personality differences 
provides support for the applicability of the 
Big Five in different countries and informs 
our understanding of the possible causes 
and consequences of geographical differ -
ences in personality. But nations comprise 
smaller regions in which the population characteristics, topography, and institutions 
vary, which raises the question of whether 
personality traits vary across regions just as 
they do across nations.
Over the past decade, researchers have 
begun to examine how personality traits 
are distributed within countries (e.g., Allik 
et al., 2009; Elleman, Condon, Russin, & 
Revelle, 2018; Ebert, Götz, Obschonka, 
Zmigrod, & Rentfrow, 2019; Fritsch et al., 
2018; Götz, Ebert, & Rentfrow, 2018; Joke -
la, Bleidorn, Lamb, Gosling, & Rentfrow, 
2015; Plaut, Markus, & Lachman, 2002; 
Rentfrow et al., 2013; Rentfrow, Gosling, 
& Potter, 2008; Rentfrow, Jokela, & Lamb, 
2015). The results provide clear evidence 
for the geographical clustering of personal -
ity within nations. For example, within the 
United States, levels of neuroticism are high 
from the Mid-  Atlantic down through the 
Midwest and Southern states, and gradu -
ally decline in the Mountain and West Coast 
states. Levels of openness appear highest in 
the New England, Mid-  Atlantic, and West 
Coast states, and comparatively low across 
states in the Great Plains and South. The 
patterns of geographical personality cluster -
ing in the United States appear robust, be -
cause similar patterns have emerged across 
multiple independent samples collected be -
tween 1999 and 2015 (Elleman et al., 2018; 
Rentfrow et al., 2013).
The majority of research on regional vari -
ation in personality has examined state-level 
differences in the United States. And just 
like nations, many states have diverse popu -
lations and topographies. Consider, for in -
stance, California, which is home to roughly 
40 million people and has six cities with 
more than 500,000 residents and 286 towns 
with fewer than 1,000 residents. With such 
diversity, it is reasonable to consider whether 
there is meaningful variation in personality 
within states. One study, which compared 
the Big Five personality traits of 860 cities 
across the United States, permitted compari -
sons of the cities from within a single state 
(Bleidorn et al., 2016). The results revealed 
great variation within states, with cities hav -
ing more in common with similar size cities 
from other states than with other smaller cit -
ies in their own state. Openness, for exam -
ple, differentiated large metropolitan areas 