Climato-economic pressures on cultural identity

• Main Author: Van de Vliert, Evert
• Other Authors: Church, A. Timothy
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Praeger 2017
• Subjects: climato-economic; biogeography; planetary psychology; North Pole; South Pole; South pole
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/11370/f2be7ad7-e71d-4ded-bbfa-6f9d47e11ff3; https://research.rug.nl/en/publications/f2be7ad7-e71d-4ded-bbfa-6f9d47e11ff3

This chapter explores the relationship between the ambient temperatures of thermal climate and the under- versus over-representation of several identity features—covering both personal attributes and personality characteristics—in populations around the world. To clarify the issue, take the attribute of gender. If men were to be more cold-blooded and less warm-blooded than women, there would be an under-representation of men and an over-representation of women toward the tropical equator. Obviously, and luckily, that is not the case. Now take creativity as an important component of the personality characteristic of openness to experience. As detailed later, the density of Nobel laureates, technological pioneers, and innovative entrepreneurs increases toward both the North Pole and the South Pole. It seems hard to make sense of this intriguing anomaly without taking into account the spatial severity of cold and hot seasons.