 Personality, location and creativityDavid Emanuel Andersson Chapter 3 in Understanding Creative Cities, 2026, pp 51-68 from Edward Elgar Publishing Abstract: The Big-5 factor ‘Openness to Experience’ is the personality trait most strongly linked to creative potential. Openness encompasses traits such as imagination, curiosity and adventurousness. A series of empirical studies in geographical psychology reveal that neighbourhoods with high population densities, mixed land uses and high cultural diversity are associated with an over-representation of high-Openness individuals. Moreover, individuals scoring high on Openness report a higher quality of life in neighbourhoods with these attributes. Openness is associated with reduced latent inhibition, which in turn is associated with greater creative potential. While Openness has connotations that many people perceive as positive, other personality traits that are also associated with lower latent inhibition include various psychopathological conditions and heavy use of psychoactive drugs. Urban environments that are especially conducive to creative ideation may thus combine above-average levels of Openness, psychopathology and drug use. Keywords: Openness to Experience; Psychopathology; Psychoactive Drugs; Subjective Quality of Life; Neighbourhood Density and Diversity; Creative Cities (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:23540_3 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing |
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