AE Blog

Do you consider yourself an agreeable person? Or when it comes down to it are you more neurotic than conscientious? How about those around you? Whatever your personality, whether you find yourself feeling right in sync with your neighbors, or are left feeling like a man, or woman, in a high and lonely castle, it might not be a question of whether you are wrong or right--objectively speaking, you may just be living in the wrong neighborhood.

A few months ago, the results of an intriguing study of personality types was published in the Boston Globe. Contained within the results of hundreds of thousands of individual personality surveys compiled by psychologists Jason Rentfrow, Sam Gosling, and Jeff Porter, a team of analysts led by Richard Florida noticed an intriguing trend. That is: personality types tend to cluster. All in all: Like-minded individuals seek same for fun and profit.

Psychologists have long established that the human personality can be broken down into five basic factors.: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. These are what is known as "The Big Five", a key component of American Environics' own American Values Survey. Each of these factors has been found to affect crucial choices in an individual's life: from basic life expectancy, marital status, political ideology, job outcomes, performance and innovation, to creativity. 

What Florida and his team found was that not only do these personality types tend to cluster together, the country's psychogeography tended to line-up surprisingly well with its economic geography. 

Of course, if you're wondering (like I was) which came first: the people or the predisposition? Is this the case of like-minded individuals flocking to a certain place -- like the San Francisco Bay Area or New York for those Open to Experience types -- or is it the place itself that affects the development of those within it? In the great chicken and egg race, no one can be sure. What we can extrapolate from this is that clustering exists, and that it could prove incredibly useful for everyone from city planners struggling over what type of public works projects to push for, to a company's decision on where to locate their regional office.

Perhaps somewhere down the line, an American of the future will plop themselves down in front of a library computer terminal in Mechanicsburg, Indiana, and, utilizing software developed with these models in mind, might base everything from their own new home in Atlanta (because they're an extroverted type) to their favorite sporting events and clubs on these models; and, arguably, he or she might come up quite satisfied to have found themselves in like-minded company.

Hailing originally from Southern Ohio, I personally can't understand how my birthplace scored so high on the neurotic level, but I am personally determined to worry about it and blow that fact entirely out of proportion. 

Richard Florida's original column is worth the read in and of itself. Check it out, via the Boston Globe: Where do all the neurotics live?

Also check out the full personality maps here

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal also has great coverage on the Renfrow, Gosling and Porter model, plus an expansive state-by-state interactive graphic here.