Regional differences in personality are associated with a range of consequential outcomes. But which factors are responsible for these differences? Frontier settlement theory suggests that physical topography is a crucial factor shaping the psychological landscape of regions. Hence, we investigated whether topography is associated with regional variation in personality across the United States (n = 3,387,014). Consistent with frontier settlement theory, results from multilevel modelling revealed that mountainous areas were lower on agreeableness, extraversion, neuroticism and conscientiousness but higher on openness to experience. Conditional random forest algorithms confirmed mountainousness as a meaningful predictor of personality when tested against a conservative set of controls. East–west comparisons highlighted potential differences between ecological (driven by physical features) and sociocultural (driven by social norms) effects of mountainous terrain.

人格的区域差异与一系列相应的结果相关。但是，哪些因素导致这些差异？边界沉降理论表明，自然地形是塑造区域心理景观的关键因素。因此，我们调查了地形是否与美国各地人格的区域差异相关（n = 3,387,014）。与边境定居理论相一致，多层次模拟的结果表明，山区的宜人性，外向性，神经质和尽责程度较低，但开放性较高。有条件的随机森林算法在针对一组保守的控件进行测试时，确认山区是人格的有意义预测指标。东西方的比较突出了山区地形的生态影响（由自然特征驱动）和社会文化影响（由社会规范驱动）之间的潜在差异。