Geopsychology: Linking the Personality to the Place
In 2023, the Big Think released an article showcasing the spatial patterns in terms of the distribution of the 5 aspects of personalities within the American population. For example, people of extroverted nature tend to live within Eastern territories of the country, most notably Northern states such as Iowa and Minnesota, as well as Southern states such as Florida and Mississippi. Despite its status as a major hub for the entertainment industry, most of California seems to fall under the nature of introverts.
The study of “personality traits, life satisfaction and social behaviour” (Psychology Today) and its spatial distribution isn’t necessarily a new field within the geography field. The World Happiness Effort, more famously recognised as the happiness index, per example is a collaborative effort between the American management consulting group Gallup, Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network is commonly recognised as a form of geopsychology, though this author does admit the flaws in categorising it under such considering that it only uses economic development variables in measuring happiness rather than personal
Of course, this system of classifying certain cities, states or even countries is without the fault of over-generalising the population. That being said, there is something to explore in geopsychology, particularly in how the personalities are distributed and what may have contributed to the creation of these patterns.
Going back to the Big Think article, laying out the spatial “hotspots” of the different personality types allows us to visually understand how the personalities are distributed, but how exactly do these results come to be? Following the logic that the individual’s personalities develop from their surroundings, two factors are to be considered: the surrounding people and the surrounding environment.
Personalities Made by Social Space
Coincidentally, our exposure to the people and environment around us comes in the form of social spaces. In fact, studies have been done linking people’s personalities with their access to the social spaces that we regularly visit.
A 2021 journal explains the correlation between place and personalities, specifically how the places we gravitate towards typically reflects our personalities, even if the change in personality is only limited to the time we spend in that location. The journal suggests that openness and conscientiousness specifically goes hand in hand with time spent in social spaces. Simply with this information, it can be deduced that simply being out and surrounded by others have an effect on the personality.
I stress, however, that social spaces must be differentiated with those of public spaces, as social spaces aren’t as accessible as we’d like to think they are. Often, there are barriers such as additional price tags to spend time in places such as cafes and bars (otherwise known as consumption spaces) which excludes those unwilling to spend the money, or require contractual prerequisites such as memberships, statuses or jobs tied to the space itself (also known as institutional spaces).
In addition to this, the ‘Spaces of Encounter’ theory theorises the effects of being surrounded by a diverse population may result in the increase of openness and agreeableness. The ‘spaces of encounter’ theory first arose from Hannah Arendt’s spaces of appearance theory, where Arendt implies the importance of public space in portraying the political freedom and equality of citizens. The exposure to these demographics allow for tolerance and understanding to grow, as the sharing of a common space allows for productive intergroup interactions resulting in the sharing of stories and opinions.
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The Urbanaissance 
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