Tobias Ebert

Tobias Ebert

Title

Prof. Dr.

Last Name

Ebert

First name

Tobias

Email

tobias.ebert@unisg.ch

Phone

+41 71 224 3866

Now showing 1 - 10 of 28

The lay of the land: Associations between environmental features and personality

( 2023)
Militaru, Ioana
;
Gregory Serapio-García
;
Tobias Ebert
;
Kong, Wenyuan
;
Gosling, Samuel
;
Potter, Jeff
;
Rentfrow, J
;
Götz, Friedrich

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 5
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
;
Gosling, Samuel
;
Obschonka, Martin
;
Ames, Daniel
;
Potter, Jeff
;
Matz, Sandra

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 7
Pandemics Initially Spread Among People of Higher (Not Lower) Social Status: Evidence From COVID-19 and the Spanish Flu

( 2022)
Berkessel, Jana
;
Ebert, Tobias
;
Gebauer, Jochen
;
Jonsson, Thorsteinn
;
Oishi, Shigehiro

According to a staple in the social sciences, pandemics particularly spread among people of lower social status. Challenging this staple, we hypothesize that it holds true in later phases of pandemics only. In the initial phases, by contrast, people of higher social status should be at the center of the spread. We tested our phase-sensitive hypothesis in two studies. In Study 1, we analyzed region-level COVID-19 infection data from 3,132 U.S. regions, 299 English regions, and 400 German regions. In Study 2, we analyzed historical data from 1,159,920 U.S. residents who witnessed the 1918/1919 Spanish Flu pandemic. For both pandemics, we found that the virus initially spread more rapidly among people of higher social status. In later phases, that effect reversed; people of lower social status were most exposed. Our results provide novel insights into the center of the spread during the critical initial phases of pandemics.

Type: journal article

Journal: Social Psychological and Personality Science

Volume: 13

DOI: 10.1177/19485506211039990

URI: https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/118053

Scopus© Citations 6
Regional intergroup bias

( 2022)
Calanchini, Jimmy
;
Hehman, Eric
;
Ebert, Tobias
;
Esposito, Emily
;
Simon, Deja
;
Wilson, Liz

Recent advances in large-scale data collection have created new opportunities for psychological scientists who study intergroup bias. By leveraging big data, researchers can aggregate individual measures of intergroup bias into regional estimates to predict outcomes of consequence. This small-but-growing area of study has already impacted the field with well-powered research identifying relationships between regional intergroup biases and societally-important, ecologically-valid outcomes. In this chapter, we summarize existing regional intergroup bias research and review relevant theoretical perspectives. Next, we present new and recent evidence that cannot be explained by existing theory, and offer a new perspective on regional intergroup bias that highlights aggregation as changing its’ qualitative nature relative to individual intergroup bias. We conclude with a discussion of some of the important challenges that regional intergroup bias research will need to address in moving forward, focusing on issues of prediction and causality; constructs, measures, and data sources; and levels of analysis.

Type: journal article

Journal: Advances in Experimental Social Psychology

Volume: 66

DOI: 10.1016/bs.aesp.2022.04.003

URI: https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/118059

Scopus© Citations 10
Spatial Analysis for Psychologists: How to Use Individual-Level Data for Research at the Geographically Aggregated Level

( 2022)
Ebert, Tobias
;
Götz, Friedrich
;
Mewes, Lars
;
Rentfrow, P

Psychologists have become increasingly interested in the geographical organization of psychological phenomena. Such studies typically seek to identify geographical variation in psychological characteristics and examine the causes and consequences of that variation. Geo-psychological research offers unique advantages, such as a wide variety of easily obtainable behavioral outcomes. However, studies at the geographically aggregate level also come with unique challenges that require psychologists to work with unfamiliar data formats, sources, measures, and statistical problems. The present article aims to present psychologists with a methodological roadmap that equips them with basic analytical techniques for geographical analysis. Across five sections, we provide a step-by-step tutorial and walk readers through a full geo-psychological research project. We provide guidance for (a) choosing an appropriate geographical level and aggregating individual data, (b) spatializing data and mapping geographical distributions, (c) creating and managing spatial weights matrices, (d) assessing geographical clustering and identifying distributional patterns, and (e) regressing spatial data using spatial regression models. Throughout the tutorial, we alternate between explanatory sections that feature in-depth background information and hands-on sections that use real data to demonstrate the practical implementation of each step in R. The full R code and all data used in this demonstration are available from the OSF project page accompanying this article.

Type: journal article

Journal: Psychological Methods

DOI: 10.1037/met0000493

URI: https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/118054

Scopus© Citations 10
Effective Maps, Easily Done: Visualizing Geo-Psychological Differences Using Distance Weights

( 2022)
Ebert, Tobias
;
Mewes, Lars
;
Götz, Friedrich
;
Thomas Brenner

Psychologists of many subfields are becoming increasingly interested in the geographical distribution of psychological phenomena. An integral part of this new stream of geo-psychological studies is to visualize spatial distributions of psychological phenomena in maps. However, most psychologists are not trained in visualizing spatial data. As a result, almost all existing geo-psychological studies rely on the most basic mapping technique: color-coding disaggregated data (i.e., grouping individuals into predefined spatial units and then mapping out average scores across these spatial units). Although this basic mapping technique is not wrong, it often leaves unleveraged potential to effectively visualize spatial patterns. The aim of this tutorial is to introduce psychologists to an alternative, easy-to-use mapping technique: distancebased weighting (i.e., calculating area estimates that represent distance-weighted averages of all measurement locations). We outline the basic idea of distance-based weighting and explain how to implement this technique so that it is effective for geo-psychological research. Using large-scale mental-health data from the United States (N = 2,058,249), we empirically demonstrate how distance-based weighting may complement the commonly used basic mapping technique. We provide fully annotated R code and open access to all data used in our analyses.

Type: journal article

Journal: Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science

Volume: 5

DOI: 10.1177/25152459221101816

URI: https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/118058
The many geographical layers of culture

( 2022)
Friedrich M. Götz
;
Tobias Ebert
;
Peter J. Rentfrow

Abstract

Type: journal article

Journal: Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Volume: 45

DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X21001734

URI: https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/118067
A many-analysts approach to the relation between religiosity and well-being

( 2022)
Hoogeveen, Suzanne
;
Sarafoglou, Alexandra
;
Aczel, Balazs
;
Aditya, Yonathan
;
Alayan, Alexandra
;
Allen, Peter
;
Altay, Sacha
;
Alzahawi, Shilaan
;
Hagel, Nandor
;
Hajdu, Hannah
;
Hamilton, Imaduddin
;
Hamzah, Paul
;
Hanel, Christopher
;
Hawk, Karel
;
Himawan, Benjamin
;
Holding, Lina
;
Homman, Moritz
;
Ingendahl, Hilla
;
Inkilä, Mary
;
Inman, Chris-Gabriel
;
Islam, Ozan
;
Isler, David
;
Izydorczyk, Bastian
;
Jaeger, Kathryn
;
Johnson, Jonathan
;
Jong, Johannes
;
Karl, Erikson
;
Kaszubowski, Benjamin
;
Katz, Lucas
;
Keefer, Stijn
;
Kelchtermans, John
;
Kelly, Richard
;
Klein, Bennett
;
Kleinberg, Megan
;
Knowles, Marta
;
Kołczyńska, Dave
;
Koller, Julia
;
Krasko, Sarah
;
Kritzler, Angelos-Miltiadis
;
Krypotos, Thanos
;
Kyritsis, Todd
;
Landes, Ruben
;
Laukenmann, Guy
;
Forsyth, Aryeh
;
Lazar, Barbara
;
Lehman, Neil
;
Levy, Ronda
;
Lo, Paul
;
Lodder, Jennifer
;
Lorenz, Paweł
;
Łowicki, Albert
;
Ly, Esther
;
Maassen, Gina
;
Magyar-Russell, Maximilian
;
Maier, Dylan
;
Marsh, Nuria
;
Martinez, Marcellin
;
Martinie, Ihan
;
Martoyo, Susan
;
Mason, Anne
;
Mauritsen, Phil
;
Mcaleer, Thomas
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Mccauley, Michael
;
Mccullough, Ryan
;
Mckay, Camilla
;
Mcmahon, Amelia
;
Mcnamara, Kira
;
Means, Brett
;
Mercier, Panagiotis
;
Mitkidis, Benoît
;
Monin, Jordan
;
Moon, David
;
Moreau, Jonathan
;
Morgan, James
;
Murphy, George
;
Muscatt, Christof
;
Nägel, Tamás
;
Nagy, Ladislas
;
Nalborczyk, Gustav
;
Nilsonne, Pamina
;
Noack, Ara
;
Norenzayan, Michèle
;
Nuijten, Anton
;
Olsson-Collentine, Lluis
;
Oviedo, Yuri
;
Pavlov, James
;
Pawelski, Hannah
;
Pearson, Hugo
;
Pedder, Hannah
;
Peetz, Michael
;
Pinus, Steven
;
Pirutinsky, Vince
;
Polito, Michaela
;
Porubanova, Michael
;
Tobias Ebert
;
Poulin, Jason
;
Prenoveau, Mark
;
Prince, John

The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the robustness of this relation based on a new cross-cultural dataset (N=10,535 participants from 24 countries). We recruited 120 analysis teams to investigate (1) whether religious people self-report higher well-being, and (2) whether the relation between religiosity and self-reported well-being depends on perceived cultural norms of religion (i.e., whether it is considered normal and desirable to be religious in a given country). In a two-stage procedure, the teams first created an analysis plan and then executed their planned analysis on the data. For the first research question, all but 3 teams reported positive effect sizes with credible/confidence intervals excluding zero (median reported β=0.120). For the second research question, this was the case for 65% of the teams (median reported β=0.039). While most teams applied (multilevel) linear regression models, there was considerable variability in the choice of items used to construct the independent variables, the dependent variable, and the included covariates.

Type: journal article

Journal: Religion, Brain & Behavior

DOI: 10.1080/2153599X.2022.2070255

URI: https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/118061

Scopus© Citations 51
Psychological Openness and the Emergence of Breakthrough vs. Incremental Innovations: A Regional Perspective

( 2022)
Mewes, Lars
;
Ebert, Tobias
;
Obschonka, Martin
;
Rentfrow, P. Jason
;
Potter, Jeff
;
Gosling, Samuel

Breakthrough innovations are expected to have a bigger impact on local economies than incremental innovations do. Yet past research has largely neglected the regional drivers of breakthrough innovations. Building on theories that highlight the role of personality psychology and human agency in shaping regional innovation cultures, we focus on psychological openness as a potential explanation for why some regions produce more breakthrough innovations than others do. We use a large data set of psychological personality profiles (∼1.26M individuals) to estimate the openness of people in metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the US. Our results reveal that psychological openness is strongly associated with the emergence of breakthrough innovations but not with the emergence of incremental innovations. The findings remained robust after controlling for an extensive set of predictors of regional innovation such as star inventors, star scientists, or knowledge diversity. The results held even when we used tolerance as an alternative indicator of openness. Taken together, our results provide robust evidence that openness is relevant for regional innovation performance, serving as an important predictor for breakthrough innovations but not for incremental innovations.

Type: journal article

Journal: Economic Geography

Volume: 98

DOI: 10.1080/00130095.2022.2049228

URI: https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/118075

Scopus© Citations 8
In a Lonely Place: Investigating Regional Differences in Loneliness

( 2021)
Buecker, Susanne
;
Ebert, Tobias
;
Götz, Friedrich
;
Entringer, Theresa
;
Luhmann, Maike

Loneliness has traditionally been studied on the individual level. This study is one of the first to systematically describe and explain differences in loneliness on a fine-grained regional level. Using data from the nationally representative German SocioEconomic Panel Study (N ¼ 17,602), we mapped the regional distribution of loneliness across Germany and examined whether regional differences in loneliness can be explained by both individual and regional characteristics. Perceived neighborhood relation, perceived distance to public parks and sport/leisure facilities as well as objective regional remoteness and population change were positively related to loneliness. Individual-level characteristics, however, appeared to be more important in explaining variance in loneliness. In sum, loneliness varies across geographical regions, and these differences can partly be linked to characteristics of these regions. Our results may aid governments and public health care services to identify geographical areas most at risk of loneliness and the resulting physical and mental health issues.

Type: journal article

Journal: Social Psychological and Personality Science

Volume: 12

DOI: 10.1177/1948550620912881

URI: https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/118055

Scopus© Citations 49

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