The Association of Perceived Neighborhood Safety and Inequality with Personality
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
The Association of Perceived Neighborhood Safety and Inequality with Personality Curtis S. Dunkel 1 & Dimitri van der Linden 2 & Tomás Cabeza de Baca 3 & Brian B. Boutwell 4 & Joseph L. Nedelec 5 & Paraskevas Petrou 2 Received: 23 March 2020 / Revised: 29 April 2020 / Accepted: 4 May 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract The relationship between neighborhood quality and personality was explored using a large nationally representative sample of midlife adults, namely, the data from the Midlife in the United States Longitudinal Study of Health and Well-Being. A multilevel approach was used to track correlations between fluctuations in perceived neighborhood safety and inequality and personality across three points in time. As predicted from life history theory, personality fluctuated along with perceived neighborhood safety and inequality such that the general factor of personality decreased as neighborhood safety decreased and neighborhood inequality increased. In a second set of analyses, monozygotic twin difference scores were used to control for possible genetic confounds. It was found that the twin who reported the greatest neighborhood safety and least neighborhood inequality also had the highest general factor of personality. Future research could be directed at identifying and remediating the specific aspects of the neighborhood that may increase the risk of negative changes in functioning. Keywords Big Five . General factor of personality . Life history theory . Monozygotic twins
Introduction “Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings.” (Conrad 1898, p. 150) Curtis S. Dunkel and Dimitri van der Linden are co-first authorship. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s40806-020-00243-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Curtis S. Dunkel [email protected] 1
Department of Psychology, Western Illinois University, Macomb, IL 61455, USA
2
Department of Psychology, Education, and Child Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands
3
Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
4
Department of Criminal Justice, University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS, USA
5
School of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA
Since the seminal book of Shaw and McKay (1942) on delinquency in urban areas, social scientists have shown interest in the possible effects of neighborhood quality on behavior. Indeed, an extensive review of studies shows that a wide range of problems are associated with living in a poor quality neighborhood (Leventhal and Brooks-Gunn 2000). One question related to that is whether environmental quality can influence personality. While it is widely acknowledged that the rank order of personality dimensions is relatively stable over time and that this stability increases with age,
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