Project Details
Projekt
Personality-Homophily in Residential Choice
Applicant
Professor Dr. Tobias Ebert
Subject Area
Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology
Term
since 2022
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 511359149
Our personality predicts into which environments we select ourselves, for example, which situations, social relationships, or jobs we enter. However, people do not only change their situations, social relationships, or jobs—they also frequently change their place of residence. To illustrate, each year 15% of the US-population change their residency. Does personality also predict into which residential contexts we select ourselves? This question has far-reaching psychological consequences; and, yet, it is largely unanswered. I try to close this gap in the literature and argue that personality traits are an overlooked determinant of residential choice. Specifically, I derive the hypothesis that persons show personality-homophily in residential choice (PHRC), that is, they select themselves into areas where other people with similar personality traits already reside. Investigating PHRC is important, because from a psychological perspective there are plausible reasons to expect that personality-homophily shapes residential choice. However, existing research on homophily in residential choice has focused on socioeconomic and ethnic characteristics and neglected personality traits entirely. To investigate PHRC, I focus on the Big Five personality traits and argue that PHRC is particularly likely to occur for the personality trait of openness. In three work packages (WP), I will try to demonstrate PHRC and identify its boundary conditions and underlying processes. WP1 uses large cross-sectional data from the US to demonstrate the existence of PHRC and investigate whether PHRC is a geographically universal and temporally stable phenomenon. WP2 combines cross-sectional and panel data in two countries (US and GB) to replicate WP1 and investigate under which conditions (e.g., life events, reasons for moving) PHRC occurs. WP3 uses a newly developed experimental setup to test the underlying processes of PHRC (are people attracted by structural features or do they want to live under similar people?) in a series of experiments. All WPs are designed to uncover the unique effects of PHRC on residential choice (i.e., above and beyond established socioeconomic and ethnic selection effects). If PHRC has a unique effect on residential choice, this would have far-reaching consequences: For one thing, this would mean that geographical personality differences are not (only) the result of established selection effects, but (also) the result of a psychological selection. For another thing, the project seeks to demonstrate that personality traits are much more important for understanding moving behaviour than previously thought.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
International Connection
Finland, Switzerland, United Kingdom, USA
