Richard Florida and Psycho-geography

[John Guscott]

Today's Boston Globe had an interesting article by Richard Florida entitled, "Where do all the neurotics live?" http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas ... tics_live/

Florida describes how, using data collected by psychologists, he mapped the clustering of populations across America based on five personality factors, agreeableness, conscientiousness, extroversion, neuroticism, and openness to experience.

It's an interesting concept, but, unfortunately, the article only includes one graph and little information. Nevertheless, I wonder how true his theory really is, and how Northeast Ohio/Cleveland/Lakewood would rank in his system.

[John Guscott]

Here's more on the issue, with extra maps:

http://creativeclass.typepad.com/thecre ... ll-th.html

[Bill Call]

It's an interesting concept, but, unfortunately, the article only includes one graph and little information.

That's the real reason newspapers are failing. In most cases if you read the headline you know as much as your are going to know after you read the whole article.

The concept is something new to me but it seems to make sense. Although I don't know about this particlular study. See this:

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2 ... f-the-usa/

I vaguely remember a similar field of study that tried to establish a link to climate and civilization. To harsh, little chance for advance. To easy, no need to advance, just pick the apple off the tree.

What would Lakewood's psychology be? What would flatter people the most? I don't know if the library still buys the yearly study of Lakewood's population. The early studies made some sense and had some basis in reality, the later one were psychobabble (aka over my head.)

[Kenneth Warren]

Bill:

Here’s some babble for you:

Inclinations of the Lakewood Psyche

• Oceanic
• Yin
• Introverted, Feeling, Perception.
• Enneagram Nine.
• Individualist culture types are prevalent in Lakewood.

Along with some links that may or may not fit your head size:

http://lkwdpl.org/focus/GridPRIZM.pdf

http://lkwdpl.org/clusters/clustersegmentation2007.pdf

http://lakewoodobserver.com/read/news/o ... al-culture

Kenneth Warren
Director
Lakewood Public Library

[Shawn Juris]

Don't forget your grain of salt with these studies. Gotta love it when a study comes out that plots your personality on a grid. Personally my favorite are the x and y variables on the GridPrizm link. Fascism to Anarchism and Neoliberalism to Communism. Apparently if your not big on these items then you're excluded from the sample population. Odd that the combination of Neoliberal, Anarchist scored so high for Urban Elders and City Roots. Can't say as I've run into many neoliberal, anarchists at the westerly or the aristocrat. They must be the exception, maybe there is a compound somewhere but then again if they were organized I'd guess they would cease to be anarchists. What a pickle.
Funny, how as a society, we're told that labeling individuals is a bad thing but those that study people keep publishing reports that help to pigeonhole and stereotype groups. Ah well, sociology, anthropology, and psychology have done so much to make things better for us, so they have a setback or two. Off to be an (fill in the blank)ist and count down the days until I have to convince a pill pusher that my kids aren't ADD, ADHD, ODD, ATT, MCI, IRS, NCAA or some other acronym.

[Bill Call]

Fascism to Anarchism and Neoliberalism to Communism. Apparently if your not big on these items then you're excluded from the sample population. Odd that the combination of Neoliberal, Anarchist scored so high for Urban Elders and City Roots.

What about us nihilists? Aren't we people too?

[Shawn Juris]

There must be another category for nihilists. I believe it was nihilists on one end of the spectrum and whigs on the other.

[Jim O'Bryan]

What about us nihilists? Aren't we people too?

well if you believe in nothing...


.

[Stephen Calhoun]

Fascinating, yet Florida isn't supplying the primary research yet. I really want to see what the distributions are for the outliers, given that the primary typing is a generalization from the 'thick' part of the (likely) Bell-like Curve.

From the article.

While it is hard to identify which came first - was it an initial concentration of personality types that drew industry, or the industry which attracted the personalities? - the overlay is clear.

Combination of the two--pretty much by definition. The type relevant to the industrial attractor gravitates toward it. At a large enough regional scale all possible Big Five clusters are represented in the population. So it is that NEO supports manufacturing, arts, research, scientific communities--each field drawing its sympathetic type to it.

However, it also is true that a region may attract and repulse specific types. There's a longitudinal aspect that could be captured were Florida to include, if he hasn't already, sociologists, anthropologists, and geographers on his team. Those specialists would tend to emphasize particularities because Florida's arch generalizing in the articles (and in his books) doesn't really draw a very complex differentiated picture.

This is one reason Ken and John's Cluster research on Lakewood is so interesting. It capture the outliers. Even if the overall yinniness (!) of Lakewood is apparent, it's also true that all sorts of inferior and oppositional factors (types) are also tangled up.

As Dylan would have it, 'tangled up in blue.'