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Surprising links between your geography and your personality.

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Surprising links between your geography and your personality.

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Many of us are very fussy about our spaces. I find that I need one kind of place to read (quiet, small, enclosed and private) and another to write (slightly more open, a little bit of a buzz in the background). When searching for new ideas, I prefer to walk in wide-open spaces like beaches or fields. When trying to solve a difficult problem, give me a winding path through deep forest. Though my professional interests might make me more attuned than most to these preferences, I know that they are not unique to me. When I think about what I need from a space and how it's related to my current activities, I usually think in terms of a complicated mix between my moods, my places, and my personality. I lean somewhat towards the introvert end of the personality spectrum, for example, so I expect that this personality trait plays a role in my preferences.

Did a succession of exposures to different kinds of environments help shape my personality? How did my early days in the city of London, my teenage years in the wide boulevards and sprawling ranch houses of suburban Toronto, and the long succession of dingy rentals necessary during my long, impoverished apprenticeship as an academic influence the development of my personality? Although we're nowhere near any answers to this question, some recent research shakes loose tantalizing suggestions of linkages between personality and place.

A recently published study by Shigehiro Oishi and colleagues at the University of Virginia showed a striking relationship between geography and personality. In a series of five studies, Oishi's group built the case that introverts are happier in mountainous settings than they are on beaches. In laboratory studies, more introverted student participants reported that they preferred scenes of mountains to scenes of beaches. In a wider-ranging experiment looking at the personality structure of residents on a state-by-state basis, the researchers found that residents of mountainous states like Washington, Idaho, and Montana showed higher tendencies to introversion than states with flatter terrain like Iowa, Ohio, and Michigan.

This fascinating finding suggests that the kind of terrain in which we live, and the affordances it provides for social interaction or solitude can influence how we feel, but it leaves open an important causal question: Do environments that are conducive to quiet reflection actually change the personalities of their residents, or do more introspective types gravitate to such environments because they feed deep needs for the kinds of situations that are most adaptive for those individuals?

The researchers tried to address this question in a final experiment in which they took individuals to two different types of settings-a secluded, wooded setting or a flat, open area-and engaged them in small group discussions. If the setting influenced variables related to introversion- extraversion, then one would predict that the wooded setting would change the nature of the group conversation. To measure this, the researchers simply recorded the number of times each participant in the group spoke during the conversation. Following the conversation, participants completed a questionnaire that was meant to probe their immediate self-perceptions of introversion or extraversion.

The final study showed little evidence for a causal effect of environment either on the talkativeness of participants or their self-perceptions. Although the results of the experiment were largely negative, the authors point out that this study was of small scope. Additionally, it might not be reasonable to suppose that a brief, single exposure to a particular type of setting would have a significant effect on the measurement of personality variables, which are presumably built over a lifetime of experiences and events, not to mention the genetic heritage that we also know influences personality.

Another recently published study by Markus Jokela at the University of Helsinki and a group of international collaborators from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States was based on online surveys completed by residents of the city of London. In this study, a large group of life satisfaction and personality variables was measured to determine their relationship with different postal districts in the city. In this study, a much finer grain of geographic analysis was possible, and the sample size was very large-56,019 residents of Greater London. As in the Oishi study, there were some striking relationships between city locations and personality variables, but only some of these variables seemed to be influenced by the physical properties of the locations-for example, density, percentage of green space, and percentage of non-domestic buildings.

The detailed findings of this paper are much more complicated than that of the Oishi study, but the thumbnail sketch is similar: Where we live can affect our levels of life satisfaction in ways that are somewhat predictable based on aspects of our personality. Like the Oishi experiments, there is no basis for the claim that our surroundings can actually change our personality, but there are strong indications that the mix of individual variables with the physical variables of our surroundings can influence how we feel, what we do, and what we think about our lives.

Winston Churchill famously proclaimed that "we shape our buildings, and afterwards, our buildings shape us." The science to support Churchill's prescient claim is only now beginning to gain steam, but the work of unraveling the relationships between urban form, personality, and individual behavior has important implications for all of us. Whether or not our built surroundings can affect core personality variables is still an open question. Regardless of the answer, we already know that we can only have psychologically sustainable buildings and cities when we know what kinds of designs are most likely to produce happiness, fulfillment, and life satisfaction.

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Does Where You Live Make You Who You Are?

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Many of us are very fussy about our spaces. I find that I need one kind of place to read (quiet, small, enclosed and private) and another to write (slightly more open, a little bit of a buzz in the background). When searching for new ideas, I prefer to walk in wide-open spaces like beaches or fields.

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This activity challenges students to think about ways in which people conceive of and modify their physical environment.

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This activity challenges students to think about ways in which people conceive of and modify their physical environment.

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Age level: grades 5 - 9
This activity challenges students to think about ways in which people conceive of and modify their physical environment.

All societies begin with the resources they have available. If the society does not engage in trade to obtain other resources, their environment will shape the choices they make. This is not to say, however, that all societies with the same resources will make the same choices. There is variation, even within the same environmental zone, which can only be accounted for by cultural traditions. Not all traders transformed desert regions into centers of world trade as the Nabataeans did. However, it is important to think about the choices a society might make if trade were not available to them.
Materials

1 or 2 photographs from magazines or Web sites that depict a number of different environments (e.g. desert, woodlands, tropical rainforest)

3 to 4 photographs that show additional details about each of the environments (e.g. animals, plants, terrain)

Library and/or Internet access

Procedure
Begin with a discussion in which students think about the resources they use in their daily lives that come from their immediate environment. You might ask what would they eat if they had to get all their food from locally grown sources? Would that even be possible today? Or to think about what they might find at a greenmarket or roadside stand in July as opposed to November.

Ask students to pretend they're 500 years back in time. Distribute each set of photographs to a group of 3-4 students. Ask them to identify and research the ecosystem. What kinds of natural resources are available? What might be in short supply, or overabundant, a positive factor or a challenge?

Imagining themselves as the photographers, what might they have heard or sensed or felt when the picture was taken?

Ask students to answer the following questions, based on information from their research and the photos, and assuming that no additional resources were available.

What would you use for shelter? For food? For tools? For clothing?

How might your environment influence social structure and belief systems?

Given that people attribute divine attributes to natural phenomena, what shapes and skills might your gods assume

Trade and ideas borrowed from neighboring groups can influence how people live within their environment. So while the students are looking at what they could do if they only had resources from their immediate environment, they might also think about how neighboring environments could expand their range of options.

The ancient culture of the Nabataeans, is an rich example of how a culture adopted and adapted practices and ideas from neighboring cultures and transformed from nomadic pastoralists to a complex society.

Each group of students should share their work with the rest of the class, presenting the images of their ecosystem and explaining their answers. Afterwards, encourage the class to bring up any additional ideas about how these various environments might affect the way people live in them.
Copyright © 2003 American Museum of Natural History. All rights reserved.

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How Does Where You Live Shape How You Live? | AMNH

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Age level: grades 5 - 9 This activity challenges students to think about ways in which people conceive of and modify their physical environment. All societies begin with the resources they have available. If the society does not engage in trade to obtain other resources, their environment will shape the choices they make.

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Experiencing Place-Based Education at Teton Science Schools

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Experiencing Place-Based Education at Teton Science Schools

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In July, Getting Smart launched Learning & The Power of Place, a thought leadership campaign designed to raise awareness of Place-Based Education (PBE).

We took on this effort because we believe PBE is currently missing from the global discussion of powerful personalized learning models that can boost access and outcomes to better equip learners with skills to address the challenges of the modern world.

We partnered with as our expert PBE advisors and headed to their four campuses to learn more. My visit to the TSS campuses in Wyoming and Idaho was a powerful, place-based professional learning experience. The Teton Science Schools PhotoBlog from my visit shows through images how TSS immerses learners in interdisciplinary, inquiry-based lessons across the curriculum and out in the world.

But, to truly understand the "power of place" as we experienced it, we wanted to share the voices of the students, teachers and leaders at TSS. As we explain in the podcast, this one's a little different from our usual format. Ready to experience place-based learning? Check out our "audio field trip" to Teton Science Schools in the first of our PBE podcast series. Look for upcoming podcasts that explain more about implementation, as well as a set of implementation guides in early 2017.
This blog is part of our Stay in-the-know with all things EdTech and innovations in learning by signing up to receive the weekly Smart Update "Place-Based Education" blog series . To learn more and contribute a guest post for the series, check out the PBE campaign page . Join in the conversation on social media using #PlaceBasedEd . For more on Place-Based Education, see:

Find Carri on Twitter, @CarriSchneider.

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Getting Smart Podcast | Experiencing Place-Based Education at Teton Science Schools

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In July, Getting Smart launched Learning & The Power of Place, a thought leadership campaign designed to raise awareness of Place-Based Education (PBE). We took on this effort because we believe PBE is currently missing from the global discussion of powerful personalized learning models that can boost access and outcomes to better equip learners with skills to address the challenges of the modern world.

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Place-Based Approaches to Researching Indigenous Montana Histories 

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Place-Based Approaches to Researching Indigenous Montana Histories 

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In the educational world we are never alone. There are so many exciting resources, tips, lessons out there that are waiting to be used! Other teachers have focused on place as a unit and the different sources give the opportunity to be flexible when planning lessons and a unit regarding place and helps in the process of incorporating standards.

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Sports Team Chiropractor Salary | Salary.com

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The average Sports Team Chiropractor salary in the United States is $78,761 as of January 29, 2021, but the salary range typically falls between $66,928 and $108,577.