Regional Psychology: Dear Reader,

I crossed over ten years ago and moved from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern to Hamburg. Since then I am a chimera, half Wessi, half Ossi - a Wossi. I noticed this for the first time when they offered me bananas in Hamburg, grinning. But even there seemed to be little differences, and now I finally know why that is.

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Issue 41/2019

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According to psychologists, the origin and place of residence shape the character. According to this, people in the north are actually overcooled, the southern Germans comfortable and big-city minded. The differences in the mind have far-reaching consequences: Several studies have shown in the past that the prevailing characters have a say in how a region chooses, how many crimes there are, how to cope with an economic crisis.

Severin Matusek / EyeEm / Getty Images

The cool North German and the open-minded urbanites: The prejudices are right

In a new analysis, researchers led by Martin Obschonka of the Queensland University of Technology evaluated more than 73,000 questionnaires from people in Germany, where each person can estimate how chatty, open or nervous they are. The analysis also involved scientists from Germany.

The test reveals what psychologists call the five crucial characteristics: extraversion, how extro- or introvert someone is, conscientiousness, openness, social compatibility, and emotional lability.

The process has pitfalls: researchers can hardly control whether the respondents answer truthfully and whether they assess themselves realistically. In addition, significantly more young people clicked through the questionnaire, the results are therefore representative only conditionally.

Nevertheless, they are conspicuously covered with clichés: in the East, people are conscientious but introverted, as is the North. The most sluggish are, on the other hand, the Lower Bavaria, Franconia and south-west Lower Saxony.

Obschonka et al./ Regional Personality Differences in Germany / Friedrich Schiller University Jena

Particularly in the case of emotional lability, also known as neuroticism, Germany seems to be divided into two parts. However, not along the former inner-German border, but along a line that connects Cologne and Munich. Those who live north of this line are more prone to nervousness, are more irritable, less satisfied and susceptible to stress.

In contrast, the "happy personalities" in Germany live in big cities. The people there are considered particularly extroverted, cosmopolitan and resilient - the best conditions to be happy.

According to the test, I am an O_41-C_64-E_89-A_74-N_18 Big Five personality type and thus the typical Wossi: more conscientious than the average Wessi, but more extrovert than the standard Ossi. That explains a lot.

If you want to know your personality type, here is the test.

warmly

Your Julia Köppe

Feedback & suggestions?

Abstract

My reading recommendations this week

• Actually, the US fighter aircraft F-35 should be invisible to radar systems. In a very readable story, my colleague Christoph Seidler explains how German technology still tracked the plane and what a pony farm had to do with it.
• The idea that we lived in an exclusively selfish world seems outdated. Instead, nature evidently has developed a hidden code that rewards collaboration. In the podcast "Radiolab" you can hear why cooperation almost always pays off, especially for bank robbers.

• Matthias Maurer becomes the next German on the International Space Station. In an interview with DER SPIEGEL, the native of Saarland told in mid-July how he plans to land on the moon in a few years' time.
• The female orgasm is often portrayed as highly complex, everything could be quite simple, as researchers have found out with the help of rabbits.

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Quiz*

• Who was the last German in space?

• Who was the first German in space?

• How heavy is a ghost particle?

* The answers can be found at the bottom of the newsletter.

Picture of the week

Alexander Kuznetsov / REUTERS

The sky over Ivalo has such a spectacle quite often - for the village in the north of Finland polar lights are nothing special. In clear weather, the billowing curtains of light appear in dozens of nights between September and March. They arise when electrically charged particles of the solar wind penetrate into the upper atmosphere. The Finnish Weather Service offers a forecast for the days when the conditions in the sky are favorable for the fantastic light show.

footnote

Three leg amputees experience their prostheses as if they were their own limbs. Researchers at ETH Zurich have implanted electrodes in a nerve of the stump. There are signals from sensors attached to the sole and knee of the prosthesis. Thus, the test persons always have a feeling for how their artificial leg is currently moving - they no longer have to pay particular attention when walking around.

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Recommendation list Science

• PLUS-Link Analysis: Quantum computers will change the world - but how?
• PLUS-Link Resources: harvesting storms - start-ups are developing flying wind turbines

* Quiz responses: Alexander Gerst / Sigmund Jähn / 1.1 electron volts (500,000 times lighter than an electron)