How Personality Traits and Where You Live Work Together to Shape Political Beliefs

A new study from Northwestern University takes a close, data-heavy look at how our personality traits interact with the political climate of the place we live. Instead of treating personality as a universal predictor of political beliefs, the researchers show something more nuanced: the same personality trait can push someone toward very different political leanings depending on their ZIP code.

This straightforward, large-scale investigation challenges long-standing assumptions in political psychology and makes a compelling case that individual ideology is shaped not just by who we are, but by where we are. Below is a clear walkthrough of all major details, plus additional context to help readers understand the bigger picture.

The Central Idea of the Study

The research demonstrates that personality traits and geographical location work together to influence a person’s political ideology. It highlights that traits like agreeableness and extraversion don’t push people toward conservatism or liberalism universally. Instead, these traits shape people to align with the dominant ideology of their local environment.

Someone who is highly agreeable in a conservative community tends to lean conservative. But an equally agreeable person living in a mostly liberal area tends to lean liberal. The same reversal appears for extraversion.

This is the first study to document such clear context-driven differences in how personality connects to political views across the United States.

How the Study Was Conducted

The research, published in Scientific Reports, used personality data collected through the SAPA Project, a long-running online personality assessment developed at Northwestern University.

Here are the important specifics:

The study analyzed questionnaire responses from more than 150,000 individuals.
Participants came from 8,700 ZIP Code Tabulation Areas across the United States.
Each participant answered between 44 and 300 questions, depending on the survey version.
The project measured all Big Five personality traits:
- Extraversion (sociability, energy, social reward-seeking)
- Agreeableness (cooperation, compassion, kindness)
- Openness (interest in new ideas, creativity, curiosity)
- Conscientiousness (discipline, rule-following, carefulness)
- Neuroticism (sensitivity, tendency to feel negative emotions)

The team then matched each participant’s personality profile with measures of how conservative or liberal their local community is. This allowed them to analyze how the relationship between personality and ideology changes from place to place.

What the Researchers Found

The study uncovered several important patterns:

1. Agreeableness works differently in different regions

In conservative communities, higher agreeableness is linked with being more conservative.
In liberal communities, higher agreeableness is linked with being less conservative (meaning more liberal).

Agreeable people tend to avoid conflict, seek harmony, and adapt to others. This makes them more likely to adopt the ideology of the people around them, whatever that ideology is.

2. Extraversion also flips depending on location

In conservative regions, more extraverted individuals lean more conservative.
In liberal regions, more extraverted individuals lean more liberal.

Because extraverts are driven by social engagement and external rewards, they tend to align themselves with the community norms that help them succeed socially.

3. Conscientiousness and neuroticism showed more expected patterns, but still varied

Conscientiousness often correlates with conservatism, but the strength of the relationship changed depending on the local political environment.
Neuroticism tended to correlate with lower conservatism in conservative communities, but the pattern again varied with geography.

4. Openness behaved more consistently

Across geographic locations, higher openness continued to correlate with more liberal views, though local factors still influenced the strength of that connection.

Why the Findings Matter

The study helps explain why earlier research on personality and political ideology frequently finds contradictory results. Many studies treated personality–ideology relationships as fixed, even though people live in communities with very different political climates.

By showing that personality interacts with local context, the new research suggests that:

Political ideology is partly a social adaptation strategy.
People use their psychological traits to help them fit in, get along, and advance in their local environment.
Polarization may be intensified when people with certain traits reinforce dominant political norms in their area.

For example, agreeable individuals in conservative regions make those regions even more conservative culturally, while agreeable individuals in liberal areas reinforce the liberal atmosphere.

This compounding effect may amplify political differences between communities.

What This Means for Understanding Political Behavior

This research offers a more realistic and dynamic picture of how beliefs develop. Instead of seeing ideology as a direct extension of personality, we can understand it as a product of the interaction between personality and social surroundings.

This has several implications:

Political communication could be more effective if it accounts for local personality-ideology dynamics.
Campaign strategies may benefit from understanding how community traits shape ideological expression.
Social scientists studying political attitudes must consider geographical context to avoid inaccurate generalizations.

The findings also highlight a humanizing insight: many people may adopt their political views not from hostility or stubbornness but from a desire to belong, cooperate, and succeed within their community.

Additional Background: How Personality Has Been Linked to Politics Before

To put this study in context, here’s what earlier research has commonly shown:

High openness → more likely to be liberal, especially on cultural issues.
High conscientiousness → more likely to be conservative, especially on moral or order-related issues.
High neuroticism → sometimes linked with liberalism but inconsistently.
Extraversion and agreeableness → previous research has been mixed and sometimes contradictory.

Past findings often treated these relationships as universal. But people with the same traits may act differently depending on regional norms, peer influence, and community expectations. This is exactly the gap the Northwestern study fills.

Additional Background: Why Geographic Psychology Matters

The emerging field of geographical psychology examines how psychological traits cluster in different places — and how environments influence personality expression and social behavior.

Political geography in the U.S. is deeply shaped by:

Urban vs. rural culture
Migration patterns
Regional history
Economic structure
Shared social norms

This means personality traits play out differently depending on the broader cultural landscape. For example:

Rural, conservative communities reward conformity and social harmony, pushing agreeable people toward conservative views.
Urban, liberal communities reward diversity and openness, pulling agreeable people in the opposite direction.

This study provides some of the strongest large-scale evidence yet that context changes how personality relates to ideology.

Why the Study Stands Out

Several aspects make this study uniquely strong:

Its sample size is extremely large (150,000+ participants).
It spans an unusually wide range of 8,700 ZIP code areas.
It uses a detailed personality instrument with up to 300 items per participant.
It integrates personality data with geographical political data in a highly systematic way.

Because of this scope, the findings give a more reliable picture than most previous studies.

Research Paper Reference

Context specific personality associations with political ideology are shaped by geographical variation
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-21447-y