Tobias Ebert

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Prof. Dr.
Last Name
Ebert
First name
Tobias
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tobias.ebert@unisg.ch
Phone
+41 71 224 3866

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    Geographical Psychology: Spatial Variation in Psychological Phenomena and their Consequences
    (2026)
    Rentfrow, Peter
    ;
    Tobias Ebert  
    ;
    Friedrich M. Götz
    Type:journal article
    Journal:Trends in Cognitive Sciences
    URI:https://alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/130155
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    Does a Small Country Have Meaningful Regional Personality Differences? The Case of Estonia
    (2025-02)
    Ling Xu
    ;
    Friedrich M. Götz
    ;
    Tobias Ebert  
    ;
    Siiri Silm
    ;
    Uku Vainik
    ABSTRACT Background Regional differences in the Big Five personality domains have been observed in several countries at different geographical granularities, often correlating with regional political, economic, social, and health (PESH) indicators. Objective We examined the extent of regional personality differences in Estonia and whether these differences were meaningfully correlated with PESH indicators. Methods Using data from the Estonian Biobank (N = 72,268; 7% of the adult population, providing unprecedented representativeness), we tested regional personality differences and their relations with PESH indicators with and without spatial smoothing. Results We found that regional Big Five scores varied by 1.19 (extraversion) to 2.78 (openness) T‐score units across counties (N = 15) and by 2.80 (extraversion) to 4.74 (openness) units across municipalities (n = 74). Also, the correlations with the PESH indicators at the county and municipality levels persisted even after controlling for gender, age, and spatial dependency, and were moderately consistent with our predictions (r = 0.23 to 0.30) and between the county and municipality levels (r = 0.41). Conclusions Estonian residents tended to be similar in personality traits regardless of their location, replicating results from other countries. Yet, small regional personality domain differences could represent valid and possibly consequential psychological variation.
    Type:journal article
    Journal:Journal of Personality
    DOI:10.1111/jopy.13013
    URI:https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/122843
    Scopus© Citations 6
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    Entrepreneurial Deviance as Bright and Dark Character Virtues: The Harry Potter Study
    (2025)
    Martin Obschnonka
    ;
    Teemu Kautonen
    ;
    Friedrich M. Götz
    ;
    Tobias Ebert  
    Type:journal article
    Journal:Small Business Economics
    URI:https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/124302
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    Entrepreneurial Deviance as Bright and Dark Character Virtues: The Harry Potter Study
    (2025-12-08)
    Martin Obschonka
    ;
    Teemu Kautonen
    ;
    Tobias Ebert  
    ;
    Friedrich M. Götz
    Type:journal article
    Journal:Small Business Economics
    DOI:10.1007/s11187-025-01147-7
    URI:https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/124937
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    On the Unequal Burden of Obesity: Obesity’s Adverse Consequences Are Contingent on Regional Obesity Prevalence
    (2024)
    Jana Berkessel
    ;
    Tobias Ebert  
    ;
    Jochen E. Gebauer
    Obesity has adverse consequences for those affected. We tested whether the association between obesity and its adverse consequences is reduced in regions in which obesity is prevalent and whether lower weight bias in high-obese regions can account for this reduction. Studies 1 and 2 used data from the United States (N = 2,846,132 adults across 2,546 counties) and United Kingdom (N = 180,615 adults across 380 districts) that assessed obesity’s adverse consequences in diverse domains: close relationships, economic outcomes, and health. Both studies revealed that the association between obesity and its adverse consequences is reduced (or absent) in high-obese regions. Study 3 used another large-scale data set (N = 409,837 across 2,928 U.S. counties) and revealed that lower weight bias in high-obese regions seems to account for (i.e., mediate) the reduction in obesity’s adverse consequences. Overall, our findings suggest that obesity’s adverse consequences are partly social and, thus, not inevitable.
    Type:journal article
    Journal:Psychological Science
    Volume:35
    Issue:11
    DOI:10.1177/09567976241265037
    URI:https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/122839
    Scopus© Citations 7
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    Natural experiments: Missed opportunities for causal inference in psychology
    (2024-01)
    Michael P. Grosz
    ;
    Adam Ayaita
    ;
    Ruben C. Arslan
    ;
    Susanne Buecker
    ;
    Tobias Ebert  
    Knowledge about causal effects is essential for building useful theories and designing effective interventions. The preferred design for learning about causal effects is randomized experiments (i.e., studies in which the researchers randomly assign units to treatment and control conditions). However, randomized experiments are often unethical or unfeasible. On the other hand, observational studies are usually feasible but lack the random assignment that renders randomized experiments causally informative. Natural experiments can sometimes offer unique opportunities for dealing with this dilemma, allowing causal inference on the basis of events that are not controlled by researchers but that nevertheless establish random or as-if random assignment to treatment and control conditions. Yet psychological researchers have rarely exploited natural experiments. To remedy this shortage, we describe three main types of studies exploiting natural experiments (standard natural experiments, instrumental-variable designs, and regression-discontinuity designs) and provide examples from psychology and economics to illustrate how natural experiments can be harnessed. Natural experiments are challenging to find, provide information about only specific causal effects, and involve assumptions that are difficult to validate empirically. Nevertheless, we argue that natural experiments provide valuable causal-inference opportunities that have not yet been sufficiently exploited by psychologists.
    Type:journal article
    Journal:Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science
    Volume:7
    Issue:1
    DOI:10.1177/25152459231218610
    URI:https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/122841
    Scopus© Citations 36
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    The lay of the land: Associations between environmental features and personality
    (2023)
    Militaru, Ioana
    ;
    Gregory Serapio-García
    ;
    Tobias Ebert  
    ;
    Kong, Wenyuan
    ;
    Gosling, Samuel
    Objective Personality traits cluster across countries, regions, cities, and neighborhoods. What drives the formation of these clusters? Ecological theory suggests that physical locations shape humans' patterns of behaviors and psychological characteristics. Based on this theory, we examined whether and how differential land-cover relates to individual personality. Method We followed a preregistered three-pronged analysis approach to investigate the associations between personality (N = 2,690,878) and land-cover across the United States. We used eleven land-cover categories to classify landscapes and tested their association with personality against broad physical and socioeconomic factors. Results Urban areas were positively associated with openness to experience and negatively associated with conscientiousness. Coastal areas were positively associated with openness to experience and neuroticism but negatively associated with agreeableness and conscientiousness. Cultivated areas were negatively associated with openness. Landscapes at the periphery of human activity, such as shrubs, bare lands, or permanent snows, were not reliably associated with personality traits. Conclusions Bivariate correlations, multilevel, and random forest models uncovered robust associations between landscapes and personality traits. These findings align with ecological theory suggesting that an individual's environment contributes to their behaviors, thoughts, and feelings.
    Type:journal article
    Journal:Journal of Personality
    DOI:10.1111/jopy.12822
    URI:https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/118062
    Scopus© Citations 20
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    Regional Personality Differences Predict Variation in Early COVID-19 Infections and Mobility Patterns Indicative of Social Distancing
    (2023)
    Peters, Heinrich
    ;
    Götz, Friedrich
    ;
    Tobias Ebert  
    ;
    Müller, Sandrine
    ;
    Rentfrow, P. Jason
    The early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic revealed stark regional variation in the spread of the virus. While previous research has highlighted the impact of regional differences in sociodemographic and economic factors, we argue that regional differences in social and compliance behaviors-the very behaviors through which the virus is transmitted-are critical drivers of the spread of COVID-19, particularly in the early stages of the pandemic. Combining self-reported personality data that capture individual differences in these behaviors (3.5 million people) with COVID-19 prevalence and mortality rates as well as behavioral mobility observations (29 million people) in the United States and Germany, we show that regional personality differences can help explain the early transmission of COVID-19; this is true even after controlling for a wide array of important sociodemographic, economic, and pandemic-related factors. We use specification curve analyses to test the effects of regional personality in a robust and unbiased way. The results indicate that in the early stages of COVID-19, Openness to experience acted as a risk factor, while Neuroticism acted as a protective factor. The findings also highlight the complexity of the pandemic by showing that the effects of regional personality can differ (a) across countries (Extraversion), (b) over time (Openness), and (c) from those previously observed at the individual level (Agreeableness and Conscientiousness). Taken together, our findings support the importance of regional personality differences in the early spread of COVID-19, but they also caution against oversimplified answers to phenomena as complex as a global pandemic.
    Type:journal article
    Journal:Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
    Volume:124
    DOI:10.1037/pspp0000439
    URI:https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/118066
    Scopus© Citations 19
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    Political Person–Culture Match and Longevity: The Partisanship–Mortality Link Depends on the Cultural Context
    (2023-10-24)
    Tobias Ebert  
    ;
    Jana B. Berkessel
    ;
    Thorsteinn Jonsson
    Recent studies demonstrate that Republicans live longer than Democrats. We examined whether these longevity benefits are universal or culturally varying. Following a person–culture match perspective, we hypothesized that Republicans’ longevity benefits occur in Republican, but not in Democratic, states. To test this argument, we conducted two studies among U.S. adults. In preregistered Study 1, we used large survey data (extended U.S. General Social Survey; N = 42,855). In confirmatory Study 2, we analyzed obituaries/biographies of deceased U.S. political partisans (novel data web-scraped from an online cemetery; N = 9,177). Both studies supported the person–culture match perspective with substantial effect sizes. In Republican contexts, up to 50.1% of all Republicans but only 36.3% of all Democrats reached an age of 80 years. In Democratic contexts, there was no such longevity gap. Robustness tests showed that this effect generalizes to political ideology and holds across spatial levels but is limited to persons with strong political convictions.
    Type:journal article
    Journal:Psychological Science
    Volume:34
    Issue:11
    DOI:10.1177/09567976231196145
    URI:https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/122840
    Scopus© Citations 11