The Association of Perceived Neighborhood Safety and Inequality with Personality

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.

Investigating the broad domains of intrinsic capacity, functional ability and environment: An exploratory graph analysis approach for improving analytical methodologies for measuring healthy aging

“…Another interesting result shows that the people-oriented trait (first-order factor 8-a mix of agreeableness, extraversion, and reliance on friends) is negatively associated with factor 20 (perceived negative quality of the neighbourhood ). Dunkel et al 41 found that higher scores in people-oriented traits (i.e. agreeableness and extraversion) are associated with higher scores in perceived positive neighbourhood qualities (such as safety) and lower scores in negative qualities such as neighbourhood inequality.…”

Multidimensional attributes of neighbourhood quality: A systematic review

“…The reviewed studies most commonly used census data [ 78 , 103 , 70 ] or postcodes [ 12 , 20 , 41 , 96 ] resources for defining a neighbourhood. However, the approach of using census tracts and block-level data has been criticised since population size and spatial boundaries are not synchronous and vary according to the settlement density [ 27 , 104 ].…”