Which sounds better to you: vacationing at Popham or Old Orchard Beach, or spending your days off hiking Katahdin?
That choice is more than a subjective preference based on aesthetics. It reveals whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert, according to University of Virginia psychologists.
In the new study, reported by the Washington Post, the study centered on five experiments that shows extroverts prefer open spaces, while introverts are more at home in wooded areas, or on mountains. It could even have a bearing on where you choose to live, the study found.
That doesn’t mean that introverts look like this when they get up in the hills:
According to the Post:
Researchers say that being in the mountains doesn’t necessarily make introverts happier than extroverts, since extroverts are on the whole happier than introverts. But being in the woods or mountains does seem to make introverts less sad.
Based on surveys of more than a half-million people nationwide, Maine as a whole is more extroverted, it turns out — which corresponds to our relatively low difference in elevation. Here’s the chart showing that relationship:
To figure out whether being isolated just made you less of an extrovert, and vice versa, the researchers studied the effects of location on groups of students. It found that people who were introverted were less happy in open spaces, but it didn’t actually change their personality. The researchers admitted that this experiment was short term and warranted more research.
