Geographical Psychology Exploring the Interaction of Environment and Behavior

by Rentfrow, Peter

• ISBN13: 9781433815393
• ISBN10: 1433815397
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-09-16
• Publisher: American Psychological Association

Summary

The places where people live vary considerably in terms of their social, economic, political, climatic, and physical characteristics. These conditions affect how people from different regions behave and interact with their environments and each other.

Geographical Psychology makes the case that understanding of psychological phenomena can be greatly informed by a cross-disciplinary perspective that investigates the spatial organization and geographical representation of such phenomena.

The research described in this volume considers how ecological, climatic, and psychological factors contribute or are related to a variety of social indicators, providing a foundation for developing theory and research in this intriguing new field of study.

Author Biography

Peter J. Rentfrow, PhD, bounced around the United States, from Louisiana to Texas to New York to Massachusetts, and somehow landed in England, where he is currently a university senior lecturer (associate professor) in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College.
 
His research concerns Person X Environment interactions and focuses on the ways in which personality is expressed in everything from people's preferences for music to the places in which they live.
 
Dr. Rentfrow's research on these topics has appeared in several of the most prestigious journals in psychology — including American Psychologist, the Journal of Personality, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Perspectives on Psychological Science, and Psychological Science. He is committed to educating the public about psychological research and does so by giving lectures and designing online interactive psychology surveys, most recently the BBC's Big Personality Test.
 

Table of Contents

Contributors

Introduction 
Peter J. Rentfrow

I. Mechanisms Underlying Geographical Variation in States, Traits, and Behaviors

1. Where on Earth Do Collectivists Live? Climato–Economic Impacts on Ingroup Love and Outgroup Hate 
   Evert Van de Vliert and Huadong Yang
2. Regional Differences in Individualism and Why They Matter 
   Lucian Gideon Conway III, Shannon C. Houck, and Laura Janelle Gornick
3. Pathogen Prevalence and Geographical Variation in Traits and Behavior 
   Damian R. Murray and Mark Schaller
4. Personality and the Realization of Migration Desires 
   Markus Jokela
5. Personality Traits and Spatial Ecology in Nonhuman Animals 
   Julien Cote, Jean Clobert, Tomas Brodin, Sean Fogarty, and Andrew Sih

II. Geographical Representation of Social Psychological Phenomena

1. Geographical Differences in Personality 
   Peter J. Rentfrow
2. Big Five Personality Differences and Political, Social, and Economic Conservatism: An American State-Level Analysis 
   Stewart J. H. McCann
3. Investigating the Subjective Well-Being of United States Regions 
   Richard E. Lucas, Felix Cheung, and Nicole M. Lawless
4. The City Where We Live Matters: The Psychology of Cities 
   Nansook Park and Christopher Peterson
5. Finding Values in Words: Using Natural Language to Detect Regional Variations in Personal Concerns 
   Cindy K. Chung, Peter J. Rentfrow, and James W. Pennebaker

III. Person X Environment Interactions

1. Residential Mobility Affects Self-Concept, Group Support, and Happiness of Individuals and Communities 
   Thomas Talhelm and Shigehiro Oishi
2. People, Culture, and Place: How Place Predicts Helping Toward Strangers 
   Stephen Reysen and Robert V. Levine
3. The Psychogeography of Creativity 
   Richard Florida and Charlotta Mellander
4. Places, Products, and People "Make Each Other Up": Culture Cycles of Self and Well-Being 
   Alyssa S. Fu, Victoria C. Plaut, Jodi R. Treadway, and Hazel Rose Markus
5. The Tyneside Neighborhoods Project: Investigating the Psychological Geography of One British City 
   Daniel Nettle and Agathe Colléony

Index

About the Editor